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Author Archives: David Megginson
Two small, useful Nautilus shell scripts
If you use a Unix-family operating system with the Gnome desktop and its default Nautilus file browser, you might know that you can extend Nautilus using simple shell scripts. Here two short and simple scripts. Terminal window This script, which … Continue reading
Tagged tips
2 Comments
The REST schism and the REST contradiction
Update: a proposal for a better name. Don Box got people talking last week in a posting where he distinguishes between two kinds of REST: lo-REST, which uses only HTTP GET and POST, and hi-REST, which also uses HTTP PUT … Continue reading
Tagged architecture, programming
4 Comments
XML 2006: Paper Tracks
For XML 2006, which will be held in Boston from 5-7 December, we’ve decided to introduce four paper tracks. Each track will extend the full three days and will serve as its own mini-conference, concentrating on a specific area of … Continue reading
Tagged conferences
4 Comments
RFC: (Java) SAX exceptions and new minor SAX version
(Note that this is not a major API change, and does not affect non-Java versions of SAX.) Over on the sax-devel mailing list, Norman Walsh, who is involved with JAXP at Sun, has requested a small change to the SAXException … Continue reading
Tagged programming
2 Comments
Programming languages of distinction
Via Ongoing, I read some interesting discussions of programming languages — mainly Python vs. Ruby, with most people happily dumping on Java. Steve Yegge, in particular, argues that language success is based mainly on marketing, and that Python is doomed … Continue reading
PHP, XML, and Unicode
Update: in a comment John Cowan points out the obvious, that a UTF-8 escape sequence can never contain an ASCII character (because the high bit is always set, as I knew but failed to register). As a result, my xml_escape() … Continue reading
Tagged programming, tips
8 Comments
A new Namespaces discussion
Eliot Kimber and I were both on the old W3C XML Working Group during the development of the Namespaces in XML specification. Late in the process, pressure from outside the WG forced us to make a major change to the … Continue reading
Tagged programming
9 Comments
Earthquakes and high tech
Ottawa had a little earthquake (magnitude 4.5) yesterday evening at 8:39 pm EST. Ottawa is Canada’s biggest high tech centre (or at least was before the dot.bomb, drawing more investment than Toronto). Like the San Francisco Bay area, Ottawa is … Continue reading
Two Web Services Questions (what actually works?)
My biggest frustration with the current Web Services debate (triggered innocently in a posting by Don Box, with followups by nearly everyone) is the lack of verifiable information. We need a big, independent study to answer two important questions about … Continue reading
Tagged business, programming
3 Comments
Remembering the Y2K panic
Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) has started a small controversy by casually mentioning that the Y2K crisis was a false prophesy (his more detailed followup posting is here; he also points to a paper that I didn’t bother reading, but … Continue reading
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