I am the subtle pen, the invisible editor. Few know me for my work but it touches many without their knowledge. I do not have the professional editorial eye of Judith or Dana and they rarely leave me anything to do. My eye is for the small modification to a sentence, the missing word that helps connect someone to what their reading. My eye is the eye of others and how to make what they are reading comfortable. My eye is unseen but watches all that we print.
A discredited and SYStematically CONniving magazine publisher has fired yet another salvo at Adobe today in their usual manner. This involves taking a blog post, re-branding it as coming from their "news desk" and altering the title to fit their vendetta. The post in question was BlueDragon Open Source - Launch Date Announced by Alan Williamson about how the New Atlanta team is working hard to get a public release ready for display at cf.Objective() 2008. Informative and straight forward. The re-branded version had the same title with a single alteration, a prefix of "ColdFusion Killer".
At no time did Alan say anything about the open source BlueDragon being a ColdFusion killer. It's not something that's been said by anyone...other than the publisher in question.
Really guys, this is getting old and stale. Just because Adobe stopped advertising with you doesn't mean you have to commit fraud to get back at them. Lame.
We're coming out with a Flex magazine along the same lines as the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. One of the first steps in publishing a magazine is coming up with a good name. Flex Authority is a great name. Problem is, it's being squatted on and the squatters (a European company being represented by moniker.com) won't even talk to us unless we offer at least $5,000.
On one hand I'm rather pissed as they're just sitting on the domain with the idea that it'll be worth something and they can sell it. On the other hand, it's much like buying a piece of land to resell later for a profit. The problem is, while waiting to resell, that land is barren and not only looks bad but brings the value of the community down. The same applies here.
Flex Authority was once an Adobe Flex site. It gave value to the community. Now it's a vacant lot gathering weeds and makes the entire community look bad. Unfortunately, spending 5k for a domain name has no return for anyone in the community at the moment and the domain is just going to waste. I'd buy or trade for it but the squatters aren't interested in anything but cash. I've offered 2k, free advertising in the Flex magazine, a trade for www.satanstool.com and the result was silence.
If I knew that the name Flex Authority would add to the success of the Flex magazine then I'd think seriously about buying it but publishing is like buying grenades in an alley. You never know if you got a good one till you try it. :)
And I really don't want to encorage squatters by giving them any money. Schmucks
Lying is easy. Lying is fun. Lying is profitable. Lying is the way of life for those who want to hide the truth. The question is, how do you lie effectively? Let's look at an example of the best techniques in action. The company using these techniques at the moment does not have to be named.
The first thing you do when lying is to tell the truth -- not the whole truth, but just enough to make the lie itself seem true - a half or quarter truth. Truth: "I hate the auto-movie ads on the site as they blow my ears off or disturb everyone around me. The intrusive pop-ups are also a problem" Lie: "Michael Dinowitz doesn't want any ads on the site"
The second thing is to quote a person. Using some abstract entity in a lie is too impersonal. You need to give the lie a human face, make it feel like it's "one of us". Adobe is a massive company and is just too big and abstract for anyone to take personally. On the other hand, Michael Dinowitz and Sean Corfield are both people who can be identified with.
This brings us to the third point of a lie: Use named, recognizable people. You can use anyone you want in a lie to help make the lie more believable but if you use people whose names are well known in a community, then your lie becomes more personal and therefore, more believable. If you combine this with a half-truth (see point one) that might be heard from these people, then all the better. You don't even have to have the half-truth come from both as long as you group the people together. This makes the lie seem even more real as "they are both saying it," even though neither did.
Finally, take a disparaging quote against the named people from someone else and don't allow the quote to be challenged. This is the most powerful technique, especially if you can make the person quoted seem like an expert. He doesn't have to be, as most people don't bother to investigate who said what.
Oh, I almost forgot an important technique. Make your lie fit into a lie told by someone else. This falls under the theory that if something is said often enough, it is seen as true, whether it is or not. "ColdFusion is dying" is a lie told often enough to have gained a life of its own despite every fact that refutes the lie.
So there you have it. The techniques used to smear people and deflect blame. The techniques that should never be used against people who LOVE to expose lies for what they are. The techniques that fail when used against a thriving, intelligent community such as ours.
When will the company in question learn that simple fact?
Do you know the definition of Chutzpah? It's taking a magazine, destroying its content and quality, canceling it without warning and then saying that it's someone else's fault. Sys-Con is like an alcoholic who just can't admit they have a problem. Their latest insult to our intelligence is to try and salve our wounds by offering us a free subscription to one of their front-end technology magazines in place of their now canceled back-end technology magazine. All 17,600 subscribers to ColdFusion Developers Journal (probably 7,600 paid subscribers and 10,000 free ones) are going to get a year's subscription to either Flex Developer's Journal or Silverlight Developer's Journal.
But wait, this is not a year's subscription to a print magazine. No, that would be something akin to admitting that they've done wrong. What they're offering is a year's digital subscription to their magazine. That's right, you get the front-end technology magazine of your choice in digital format in place of the back-end technology magazine that you expected. And because Flex, Silverlight and ColdFusion are all so similar in Sys-Con's minds, they can repeat the canard that ColdFusion is dying. Of course, this is not true despite their best efforts.
Do they have any clue what these technologies are? Let me try to explain it to them in simple terms:
SYS-CON to Offer Free (digital) Subscriptions to ColdFusion Developer's Journal Readers
Fusion Authority Quarterly Update - The only ColdFusion journal in print
I was just looking over my post about CFDJ's shafting of the ColdFusion community when I noticed the date. Their press release about it is dated "Sep. 9, 2007 05:30 PM". My blog post (which broke the news) is dated "September 8, 2007 11:52 PM". I'm going to chalk the difference up to them not even being able to get the time right. :)
Sys-Con is a printing company. They are not interested in community support. They are not interested in language advancement. They are interested in money. They are interested in enough money to print a magazine, give it away to thousands and still make a profit. Looking over the number and cost of ads in their magazine, they must want a BIG profit. And those advertising dollars are partially guaranteed by Adobe's support.
According to Sys-Con:
After ColdFusion became part of the Adobe product line Adobe recently decided to discontinue its support of the magazine.Now from what I saw in the last issue of CFDJ from months back, there were still Adobe ads. What exactly was the support that was being cut back? One less ad? Half of the ads? All of them? Or did Adobe give them direct cash above and beyond the ads for operations? We won't know till someone from Adobe responds.
But unless Adobe was funding the ENTIRE magazine, any cut in their support should not cause it to fold. The Fusion Authority Quarterly Update isn't folding and not only don't we get direct money from Adobe, we don't even have any Adobe ads in this (and probably the next) issue.
Of course, we care about the community quite a bit more than we do money. That's why we're not a media giant like Sys-Con. But we still have our souls. In the end, I think that's what matters most.
Note one other thing missing from this press release. They are not taking any responsability for their own actions. The total lack of editorial quality, the 'borrowing' of content from other people's websites, their own website being so ad filled that nothing can be found and those freeking annoying auto-play video and popup ads. In the end many of the big names in the community had left them and moved on to other journals or websites. This is just as telling as the removal of Adobe's support.
The biggest problem here is that it looks bad for ColdFusion. The first print magazine dedicated to it has left the building. Now rather than a ColdFusion magazine and a ColdFusion journal, there's only a journal. The very fact that they're moving the magazine from ColdFusion, an Adobe product to Silverlight, a Microsoft product, can and will be used against ColdFusion.
For those who want to get some quality printed ColdFusion and want to ignore Sys-Con, the following journal and books are available:
To be totally self serving, if you want to buy an ad in the only print ColdFusion journal around, we would be happy to sell you one. :)
Sys-Con Press Release:
http://ajax.sys-con.com/read/426141.htm
To quote Wikipedia on forking:
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software. Free or open source software is inherently prone to forking.
So basically there is no conceptual problem with forking an application. But what about legal? To quote part of a common open source license:
2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.
Note the term "derivative works". ANYONE can take an open source project and alter it to their heart's content. If they plan to distribute it, they need to document their changes, but other than that, there is literally no law against the forking or modification of any open source project. The only question is: Should you?
In most cases, the answer is no. If you fork a project then it'll be hard to update your code with changes made to the original. It may even cause breakage of the original code. The only time you should fork code is when you know what you're doing and have a good reason to do it. Note again what I just said. Only fork code if you really need to and know what you're doing. If you fulfill those two conditions, then fork away. It doesn't matter if it's a modification to a small UDF or to a whole framework. As long as you're willing to take the risks and the consequences, let nothing stand in your way.
In other words, fork in knowledge, fork in safety, but let no one stand in the way of you forking.
As a final note, anyone who has added a custom layout or pod to BlogCFC has, in essence, created a personal (and minor) fork of that software.
I've been a little gun shy about posting recently. I stopped responding to a post about the use of the This scope. I did not follow up on the arguments for/against my actions with Mach-II. I did not follow up on anything because I got some rather negative feedback from people I respect. Their main argument basically came down to me looking bad because I was advocating altering a framework for perceived optimization.
This is my response on the matter, and if it gets me into more trouble, then so be it. The client I was working for was moving from ColdFusion to ASP. They were running on ColdFusion MX 6.1 and were not going to upgrade. They had a Mach-II application that had 363 method calls per page (213 mach II and 150 non-Mach II), which should not be the case. They were experiencing a HUGE delay per page for more than one or two people at a time and needed it fixed NOW. Yes, I altered Mach-II, along with other code, and it had a positive effect.
Were the number of method calls normal for a Mach-II application? Probably not. If any application used that many method calls, the writer would be shot, so this had to be an abnormal case. Would my alterations show any real speed increase in a well-designed Mach-II application? Again, probably not. I expect that a well-designed Mach-II application would use far fewer method calls and the total savings from the changes I made should be negligable. There are still a few places in Mach-II where I see possible improvements, and these have been sent to the Mach-II team for official review and inclusion. Will they have significant savings? See my answer above.
In the case I mentioned above, the client was happy and the contract was fulfilled. Would I do it again? Definitely! Why?
Because I'm an employee. So are you. We work for someone. We can offer our suggestions to them, let them know what we've seen and heard and try to move them towards proper code and procedures, but at the end of the day we are just employees. The client is always right, and if we feel otherwise, we can either suck it up or get a new client.
I get called in on emergency contracts all the time. When something is going wrong and it needs to be fixed immediately, then I get the call. For the client mentioned above, it required a fast and dirty fix. For another client, it required a fast fix for their "memory build and crash" problem and then an analysis of how to fix it. Sometimes the analysis leads to suggestions that 'break' OOP, but the end result is always the same. Better code for better performance.
Do I disrespect frameworks? Not at all. I'm one of the founders of the Fusebox framework (a methodology at the time). Do I advocate altering frameworks directly? My last post stated quite clearly that I do not feel that a framework should be altered except by those that know what's going on. On the other hand, if you know what's actually happening in the framework, feel free to alter it. But if you do, realize that you are essentially "forking" the framework, and any upgrades made to the framework cannot be reflected in your code unless you make some hands-on alterations.
But that's the beautiful thing of open source. Anyone can fork it. Anyone can remove the parts they don't want or need in order to tailor the code to their use.
I just installed IE 7 on my home server and tried it out. Let me say bluntly that I hate it. The UI is very different and I don't seem to have any option to move bars around. No, I don't mean the 'extra' bars like the Google toolbar or links. I'm talking about the standard toolbars that every browser has and needs. The file/edit/view options are not on top where they are in just about every Microsoft product. The home/page and other buttons are thrown all the way down and to the right of the new tab bar and the url entry form is right on top. This configuration sucks.
Maybe I'm totally wrong. Maybe Microsoft spent a billion dollars to poll average, non-programming people and found out that this is the layout they want. Maybe this is better for productivity in a business environment. Maybe I'm just in User Interface shock because of the radical change.
Bottom line is that I'm really not impressed and I doubt that the people who visit my site will be either. I've seen a very stead shrinking of the IE marketshare and this new version of IE feels very much too little, too late.
