Chris Zumbrunn's personal think tank

The Moon And The Sky by Sade

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:41:00 GMT

6.2.2010, 19:41

Written In Reverse by Spoon

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:57:00 GMT

24.1.2010, 19:57

Keep Cool My Babies!

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:33:00 GMT

How? *Seven Month*? And what then? The chance of him being shown somewhere we can see him over here in Europe are slim :-(

Oh, well, I'm looking forward to watching his last shows this weekend, when they will be shown on CNBC Europe. On Conan's last show, apparently Neil Young is the musical guest! Enjoy it while it lasts, as they say!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/22/conan-obriens-heartfelt-f_n_433954.html:

Conan O'Brien's final "Tonight Show" aired Friday, and while much of it was funny and some was expensive, the show ended with heartfelt words from the long-time NBC host:

"Before we end this rodeo, a few things need to be said. There has been a lot of speculation in the press about what I legally can and can't say about NBC. To set the record straight, tonight I am allowed to say anything I want. And what I want to say is this: between my time at Saturday Night Live, The Late Night Show, and my brief run here on The Tonight Show, I have worked with NBC for over twenty years. Yes, we have our differences right now and yes, we're going to go our separate ways. But this company has been my home for most of my adult life. I am enormously proud of the work we have done together, and I want to thank NBC for making it all possible.

Walking away from The Tonight Show is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Making this choice has been enormously difficult. This is the best job in the world, I absolutely love doing it, and I have the best staff and crew in the history of the medium. But despite this sense of loss, I really feel this should be a happy moment. Every comedian dreams of hosting The Tonight Show and, for seven months, I got to. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second. I've had more good fortune than anyone I know and if our next gig is doing a show in a 7-11 parking lot, we'll find a way to make it fun.

And finally, I have to say something to our fans. The massive outpouring of support and passion from so many people has been overwhelming. The rallies, the signs, all the goofy, outrageous creativity on the internet, and the fact that people have traveled long distances and camped out all night in the pouring rain to be in our audience, made a sad situation joyous and inspirational.

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I'll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere.

Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."

Huffpost has the video.

23.1.2010, 12:33

Module system strawpersons

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:09:00 GMT

ihab.awad at gmail.com wrote to es-discuss on Thu Jan 14 13:06:39 PST 2010:

"Hi folks,

Kris Kowal and I have written up our proposals for a module system, to be discussed during the Jan 28-29 meeting. The proposals are as follows:

1. http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:modules_primordials

Module proposal, by Kris, focusing on management of primordials.

2. http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:modules_emaker_style

Module proposal, by Ihab, focusing on EMaker-style invocation semantics.

3. http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:modules_packages

Packages proposal, by Ihab, focusing on how code may be identified and distributed.

Ihab"

16.1.2010, 19:09

You find what you google for.

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:47:00 GMT

Nuff said.

16.1.2010, 0:47

Move your money - It's a Wonderful Life

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:43:00 GMT

"Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money."

Eugene Jarecki's short video based on the story in the classic Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, where community banker George Bailey helps the people of Bedford Falls escape the grip of the rapacious and predatory banker Mr. Potter:

www.moveyourmoney.info

30.12.2009, 7:43

ServerJS - Brewing The Perfect Storm

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:08:00 GMT

Michael Mahemoff writes on ReadWriteWeb about Server-Side Javascript and how he sees it back with a vengeance...

"Last month was Javascript season in Europe, with two conferences dedicated to the language that powers interactive web applications, and a third, which featured it heavily. If a common theme emerged, it was the buzz about Javascript leaping out of the browser to serve other domains, and the noise has only become louder in the aftermath."

"Of all the applications outside the browser, server-side Javascript is the most alluring for reasons described in this post. An idea that would have had you laughed out of the room a few years ago is edging towards reality."

19.12.2009, 12:08

While society must do things the right way, its people must find ways to do the right thing

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:57:00 GMT

Nuff said.

18.12.2009, 19:57

CommonJS effort sets JavaScript on path for world domination

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:24:00 GMT

Ars Technica has an article by Kris Kowal about the CommonJS effort and the general state of Javascript outside the web browser... Indeed, jsconf.eu turned out to be quite a ServerJS party, much more so than I had expected.

"This has been a big year for JavaScript. New, fast engines have tested their legs. Libraries have matured. With the ECMAScript 5 draft proposal, the language is growing. However, the language remains largely in exile, to only be used in Web browsers. This year has marked a resurgence of efforts to make JavaScript useful outside the browser. This was patently obvious at this year's first European JavaScript conference, jsconf.eu."

4.12.2009, 18:24

ServerJS - putting Javascript to work on the other side

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:20:00 GMT

Slides from my recent presentation at the JavascriptDay at WebTech 09 in Karlsruhe:

"JavaScript on the server-side has been around a while but is seeing a recent increase of freshly sprouting open source projects. As an ad-hoc grassroots effort, the CommonJS working group is attempting to standardize an API of server-side JavaScript environments and build a standard library, enabling far more code sharing between projects. Why is the CommonJS effort a major step forward for ServerJS and what are the unique contributions ServerJS can make to the future of web development? How can you leverage this spirit when using JavaScript on the server-side in your projects today?"

19.11.2009, 11:20

Eating healthier would safe the planet

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:31:00 GMT

For the the World Watch Institute, two environmental scientists of the World Bank have rechecked the numbers of that 2006 UN report, which you might remember me mentioning not to long ago.

That report of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said that global meat production is causing over 18% of men made green house gas emissions, more than the entire CO2 emissions of all forms of transportation combined.

While rerunning the numbers, the World Bank scientists noticed some major omissions, drastically underestimating the true impact of livestock production on the global climate.

The UN FAO report counted 7'516 million tons of CO2 equivalents. The report did not count 8'769 million tons of CO2 equivalents caused by the respiration of the livestock. Nor did the report account for the at least 2'672 million tons of CO2 equivalents that would be absorbed by the improved CO2 balance of reduced land usage for food production, allowing forests to regenerate, absorbing more CO2.

The report also undercounted methane gas emissions by an additional 5'047 million tons of CO2 equivalents. That's because the report counted the global warming potential of the methane emissions using a 100-year timeframe, while methane, with its 90% lower half-life in the atmosphere than CO2, should more accurately be counted using a 20-year timeframe.

Also, the UN's "Livestock�s Long Shadow" report used partially outdated and undercounting numbers. For example, it uses citations dating back to such years as 1964, 1982, 1993, 1999, and 2001, where emissions today would be much higher. While the report based its calculations on 33.0 million tons of poultry production in 2002, even the UN FAO�s own Food Outlook of April 2003 reports that 72.9 million tons of poultry were produced worldwide in 2002.Taking several additional categories of overlooked, undercounted and misallocated emissions into account, would add at the very least another 8'560 million tons of CO2 equivalents.

The corrected numbers increase the CO2 emissions that need to be attributed to livestock production from 7'516 million tons to a whooping 32'564 million tons of CO2 emissions, which means that livestock production is responsible for more than 50% of man made global green house gas emissions.

Even if we would switch the entire planet completely to renewable energies, suppress all industrial CO2 emissions worldwide and ban all cars, truck, airplanes and boats, new and old, everywhere, the effect for the climate would be smaller than switching to a vegan diet.

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

21.10.2009, 20:31

JVM Web Framework Smackdown

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:12:00 GMT

Linux Magazine's JVM Web Framework Smackdown article... "compares three of the most promising modern Java frameworks: JRuby on Rails (JRoR); Grails, powered by Groovy; and Helma, with Rhino JavaScript"...

The article covers the fundamentals...

Helma... "uses Rhino JavaScript, the oldest language on the JVM besides Java itself. Rhino was created by Netscape and later inherited by the Mozilla Foundation. It is backed by Google, and it is the default scripting language implementation available in Java 6. It offers strong performance and a rich set of utilities, all of which Helma leverages beautifully."

"Helma was the easiest to get up and running. Once you download the package, run ./start.sh [...] and navigate to http://localhost:8080/ to find a page with links to various tools, documentation, and the Helma website."

...attempts to explain Helma concepts...

"The biggest challenge learning Helma is shifting your mode of thinking�not entirely different from first learning JavaScript�s prototype-based object system. Most frameworks are written in object-oriented languages; Helma is an object-oriented framework. It is a subtle, but critical distinction. With Helma, you build one massive object that is the web application. While confusing at first, the final organization seems very intuitive."

...finds some things to reasonably gripe about...

"Helma�s organization does lead to some weird cases. For instance, consider registering a new user. This should obviously be an action placed under the User prototype. Right? Wrong. Every User action must match up to an existing user. Therefore the registerUser action must be stored in Root. As a result, this directory can feel like a random grab-bag.

In theory, you could avoid this issue by creating a default object and cloning it. This would fit nicely with the cloning-based approach of prototype-based object systems, but it does not seem to be the standard for Helma."

...and concludes...

"[...] developing an application in Helma was a pleasure. The organization, while unusual, was also very powerful and will challenge your assumptions about how web development should be done. [...] While its libraries are decent, they pale compared to Rails and Grails. Still, it was the most fun to develop in."

6.9.2009, 17:12

Before implementing a solution to a problem, always search for a workaround, because the workaround is often better than the original solution

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Nuff said.

26.8.2009, 9:00

If they are not ready for what they need, give them the backbone for their future baby steps

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:01:00 GMT

Nuff said.

16.8.2009, 11:01

Been there, but haven't done that

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:05:00 GMT

long-distance-swimming-im-lac-de-st-croix

3.8.2009, 1:05

Unus Pro Omnibus - Omnes Pro Uno

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:40:00 GMT

independence: 1 August 1291
- de facto: 22 September 1499
- recognized: 24 October 1648
- restored: 7 August 1815
- constitution: 12 September 1848

tld: .ch

name: Eidgenossenschaft (oath cooperative)

official name: Confoederatio Helvetica (CH)

capital: de jure: none, de facto: Berne

head of state: undefined

head of government: none

executive branch: federal council with principle of collegiality

form of government: half-direct concordance-democracy, sui generis

official language: no particular one

nationality: none, actually, since the point of the confederation is a pact to swear that we do not want to belong to anything like that, la Suisse n'existe pas. Ok, foreigners refer to it as Swiss, but being swiss is a denationality and Switzerland is a denation. It's something to be proud of.

sovereignty: it's not just about voting rights: the power is with the people, they are the army and they keep their guns at home. Sometimes these guns are used for ugly suicides, but hey, that is a right a sovereign citizen has, and since as a logical consequence assisted suicide is legal as well, there are usually less violant options available with the help of non-profit "exit" organisations. Anyway, what the guns are there for primarily, of course, is to ensure that the sovereignty can never be taken away from the people, not even by their own government. The guns are there as a dissuasion, to ensures that they will never be used after all.

solidarity: if your fellow citizens have guns at home and are trained to use them, you better show due solidarity. Plus, it's in the spirit of that oath, remember? Unus Pro Omnibus - Omnes Pro Uno.

subsidiarity: citizens delegate administrative processes and governance to the most local level possible: their community. The communities may further delegate issues that can not be appropriately handled at a local level to more distant levels, such as their districts, cantons or the confederation. That also means that, as a foreigner, you can't get the citizenship directly from the confederation, instead you have to be accepted by one of its communities as one of their own.

sustainability: only if we are willing to do the work. Sustainability is the double-process of living the system in ways sustainable for its environment while sustaining the system itself.

and btw, in case you noticed: the conceptual analogies are not coincidental - this confederation is political open source - feel free to copy the bits you like to improve its concepts as part of your own political systems. We'll be watching with interest and are eager to learn from your anarchistic development.

;-)

1.8.2009, 17:40

Hang You From the Heavens by The Dead Weather

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:29:00 GMT

18.7.2009, 20:29

Web-based editing of sandboxed server-side javascript apps

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:29:00 GMT

The puzzle pieces are starting to come together: Hannes' Helma NG screencast of a development environment running in the browser, with fine grained security and sandboxing. In other words, allowing untrusted users to write hosted serverjs apps using a web-based editor:

Helma NG - web editor and security from Hannes Wallnoefer on Vimeo.

12.7.2009, 21:29

PubSubHub against spam and walled gardens

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:56:00 GMT

PubSubHubBub, a simple, open, server-to-server HTTP-based publish/subscribe protocol as an extension to Atom. Exactly the way I would go about doing away with smtp and reinventing foaf, killing spam and walled garden social networks at one fell swoop.

11.7.2009, 8:56

CometD at a glance

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:08:00 GMT

Greg Wilkins gives a rundown on the features and extensions of CometD, the bi-directional low-latency messaging bus over long-lived HTTP connections, implementing the Bayeux protocol.

8.7.2009, 9:08

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:04:00 GMT

In 2006, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation published a report, confirming that the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated by just the farm animals which are raised for meat production are higher than the entire CO2 emissions generated by all forms of transportation.

Last week, the Swiss Federal Government published the results of a study conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich. A study, which was commissioned by the Federal Office for Agriculture, the Federal Office for the Environment and the Swiss Farmers Union, the powerful conservative lobby of the swiss farmers. A study, which was to find ways to help reduce those greenhouse gas emissions.

The result of the study: The way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions is to eat less meat. Nothing can reduce greenhouse gas emissions as effectively as reducing the amount of livestock, and that is only possible if the meat consumption is also reduced. There are no technical or conceptual means to effectively reduce these emissions any other way. No surprise to me, but it is nice to see the hardcore lobby that is fighting against this change, having to officially confirm the negative impact of its own policies.

This means the single measure of replacing the beef consumption with a vegetarian diet would essentially fix the global warming problem. As a minor nice little side effect, it would mean that we would no longer waste over half of the world's fishing catch as feed for livestock. We would free up 70% of all agricultural land - that is almost 30% of the earth's land surface - in order to grow vegetables, nuts and grains, which would easily yield a 50 fold increase in global food production. Since we wouldn't need that much food, we could convert large amounts of land back to forests, which would provide a huge amount of CO2 neutral fuel and construction material. The rainforest could thrive again, providing increasing natural habitat for exotic, some un-known, many almost extinct animals and insects. Plus, this would further improve the CO2 balance, since these forests would massively absorbe CO2 and produce oxygen. Plus, we could combine these advantages by growing our fruits, vegetables and nuts in edible forest gardens. Switching to farming for a vegetarian diet would conserve 70% of the earth's clean water, since farming animals requires over 10 times the amount of water. With the energy required to produce 1 kilogram of beef, you could easily run your Macbook for 100 years. Switching to a vegetarian diet, our life expectancy would increase by 15 years, and we would live not only longer but healthier, reducing the cost of our health care system. Should I go on?

Clearly, we should try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Every time we consume animal products, we directly and actively lower the quality of life on planet earth. Most drastically that of the animals who were used for that production, but also the quality of life of everyone else - and our own.

Living life without consuming animal products actively and directly improves the quality of life on planet earth. Yours and everyone else's.

23.6.2009, 13:04

Surrender by Cheap Trick

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:52:00 GMT

Thank you Conan for using this track to kick off your very first Tonight Show. That reminder catapulted it from a dusty vinyl in the book shelves to a spanking fresh track on the top of my playlist.

7.6.2009, 15:52

A car has nothing to do with a carpet

Thu, 28 May 2009 09:39:00 GMT

On comp.lang.javascript:


rf wrote:
> boss wrote:
>>  
>> I am using java language
>
> In that case you are in the wrong newsgroup.
> 
> Java has nothing at all to do with javascript, just as 
> a car has nothing to do with a carpet.

Except that you can use one inside the other, like when you are going the helmatic route :-)

28.5.2009, 9:39

ES5 Candidate Specification

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:31:00 GMT

The fifth edition of ECMA-262, the industrial standard scripting language specification, which should later become the fifth edition of ISO-16262, has now reached the "Final Draft" state and will enter the testing and validation phase, on target for approval later this years.

In case you missed it, ES5 is the effort formerly known as ES3.1, and got renamed to ES5 in order to clean up the confusion with the version numbers of the different proposals, skipping the ES4 version. "ES Harmony" would therefore one day be called ES6, not ES4.

8.4.2009, 23:31

Chris Zumbrunn's personal think tank

The Moon And The Sky by Sade

Written In Reverse by Spoon

Keep Cool My Babies!

Module system strawpersons

You find what you google for.

Move your money - It's a Wonderful Life

ServerJS - Brewing The Perfect Storm

While society must do things the right way, its people must find ways to do the right thing

CommonJS effort sets JavaScript on path for world domination

ServerJS - putting Javascript to work on the *other* side

Eating healthier would safe the planet

JVM Web Framework Smackdown

Before implementing a solution to a problem, always search for a workaround, because the workaround is often better than the original solution

If they are not ready for what they need, give them the backbone for their future baby steps

Been there, but haven't done that

Unus Pro Omnibus - Omnes Pro Uno

Hang You From the Heavens by The Dead Weather

Web-based editing of sandboxed server-side javascript apps

PubSubHub against spam and walled gardens

CometD at a glance

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem

Surrender by Cheap Trick

A car has nothing to do with a carpet

ES5 Candidate Specification

ServerJS - putting Javascript to work on the other side