Entropy entertainment

So I'm working on an XML/XSLT project right now that for some strange reason is introducing some randomness when transformed on the server. Funny things happen when you apply /dev/random to a massive music catalog. When thinking I was going to be listening to a little John Mayer I instead got treated to a group that sounds like it knows a lot about entropy. A 30 second sample should be enough to make you laugh, the entire thing made me laugh so hard I cried.

Oh what a world...

I thought we'd moved past this people???

So like most, I have several email addresses, the sacrificial lamb, the old standard and the one for friends. As a matter of policy, the sacrificial lamb is never checked and only cleaned out when I remember. This is the one I give out to sites I know to have horrible personal information practices that have no reason to ask for my email anyway but won't let me move past some part of their workflow without supplying said address. Usually, the only reason I'm interacting with them in the first place is because of business.

Then there's the old standard, the yahoo address everyone signed up for when it started and that a few of us kept because we didn't want google reading our email (not that yahoo doesn't have the opportunity, they're just not as obvious about it). This is the one that gets used for most registration processes, search agents, etc... It's pretty slammed with spam but not too hard to keep clean.

Then there's the one we use for friends. This one is our personal address and usually only given out on business cards, beamed to someone's phone or otherwise protected religiously. Policy is rarely broken on this one but every once in a while I use mine for purchasing something with a company I like for one reason or another.

So what's the point? The point is that I broke policy with my friend email for a company I thought had better practices then it apperantly does. Kingston. It's not like they shared my address with everyone in their address book (at least not yet) I'm just annoyed because this morning I had the typical product-offer that usually fills my yahoo account in my "friend-box". Now, I can use the delete key but because it's a reputable company I decide I'll unsubscribe first, after all they've done what any normal company would have done and put an unsubscribe link in their email. Unfortunately that's where my annoyance really began. Instead of taking me to a nice reassuring message that "We're sorry we bothered you. Thank you for the hundreds of dollars you've given us in the past. We won't email you again but please think about us the next time you need to spend a bunch of money on RAM" I'm directed to a page that requires me to re-enter my personal info, UNcheck a bunch of boxes and pop a couple of radio buttons over. Clearly the page is designed to get people to subscribe not the other way around.

KINGSTON. Go back to school. You could use some UI help and some business help. I was a nice happy customer now, while not completely ticked off, I'm annoyed with you.

My love/hate relationship with Java

Recently (um, last month recently) Joel had a great blog on choice . I asked Tasha about the differences between sleep and hibernate and she came up with some answer that involved mammals. I love having a technology litmus test at home by the way.

When doing consulting I cross languages frequently and one thing has always bugged me about jumping into Java, choice. As a technologist I both love choice and hate it at the same time. I love the fact that new technologies are adopted much more quickly in Java and it's a great "proving ground" for useful ways of doing things but there's a serious cost that's rarely counted in this paradigm. In the .NET world when you want to do remote communication you've got only a few choices, and mostly MS will just push you into SOAP. In Java, there's choice and it wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that in order to make an educated decision on one platform or another, one must learn to the point of understanding the pros and cons of each. To choose without knowing the risks and rewards of each choice is to drive blind and hope there's not a wall somewhere in your path (or that you've gained enough momentum to smash through said wall). In Java, you often have to find and understand many different frameworks and sometimes different versions of the different frameworks.

Granted, the existing environment often makes this choice for you but still... No one solution is right for all problems. This is true in the Microsoft world as well but you are forced to work around any built-in roadblocks and for the most part they're understood because there is no choice so people have worked around them before. In the Java world people just find a different framework that fits their needs and it's the act of "finding" that I call wasted cost. This is compounded when you leave and come back to Java because all of these little frameworks improve at their own pace so you can't count on your understanding of the landscape when you were standing on the playing field the last time.

Don't get me wrong, I do like Java. I like tinkering with new technologies and frameworks as it affords an opportunity to broaden my mind beyond the current Microsoft offering. I like .NET too because there are so many tedious things that are just done for you (accidental difficulties). Anyway, that's my thought from the morning commute.

Good day eh...

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif...and welcome to day 12.

Ok first post on the blog and I've got to rant because my phone is pissing me off. I get the bluetooth-to-internet link working on my Macbook Pro and the darn thing keeps hard-locking. Perhaps Windows Mobile has detected that I'm connecting with a MacBook and ups the frustration level automatically. That'd be a great theory if it didn't happen with my Sony XP laptop as well. Time to pop the firmware.
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