monkinetic the blog

David P. Reed is discussing some fundemental questions about the process of dividing up the radio spectrum to provide “non-interference” between electromagnetic devices.

As is often the case, this great quote applies simultanously to technology and human behavior:

And the basic question of the limits on “spectrum capacity”, as a scientific question, is slowly developing answers - surprising ones. It turns out that network cooperation increases capacity.

For future reference, I’ve archived the post about non-typed languages and IDL here.

Dave is making a point on Scripting News regarding IDL (or in this case WSDL) for Frontier, and other non-typed scripting languages. His point is that he cannot generate at runtime the WSDL directly from the code, as can C# or Java developers - b/c their runtimes have information about the types and numbers of parameters to a call.

This means having to handcode the WSDL for a web service in these environments, which can be a PITA if your service is at all large.

I have an idea though. One way to get around this would be to implement a meta-data header for these environments similar to javadoc. I’ll use Frontier as an example.

In Frontier, scripts are outlines. Frontier already has a rich set of functionality dealing with rendering outlines into other formats, esp. HTML. You can use #directives in your outlines, which get translated into information in the symbol table when rendering the outline (or any other datatype for that matter).

So, I would propose a simple set of #directives that can be inserted into a script outline above the actual script code, as a commented block. That block can be grabbed and processed to generate whatever idl format is desired.

This is just an idea, someone with more Frontier experience could come up with a better design. I also know that Perl has Perldoc and POD (inline support for manpages), so including this information in perl scripts in a long tradition in that community.

Also, at least someone is working on WSDL support in Python (which has an easily introspected runtime). “Therefore I am planning to write a WSDL generator that will examine our exposed methods and write out a valid WSDL file.”

So, I think that lack of explicitly typed data should not be the final reason not to support some sort of IDL for web services. There may be other, better reasons, but I have not seen them yet.

Apple has posted a wrapup of Mac OS X-related announcements from NAMM, a “bi-annual musical markets convention” in LA. Looks like some cool stuff going on.

Oh wow! splorp.blog has been updating and I missed it! May it never be! The truth is, Grant had not pinged weblogs.com I think, and my Trackerpane had not picked it up.

Happy happy joy joy!

Charles Wiltgen, (former?) Quicktime product manager, offers this .NET primer for Mac users. Why .NET is going to affect us, and why it can be a Good Thing™.

It’s a good read, very basic, and he makes some very good points. I’ll have to finish the article before passing judgement, but read it for yourself and see what you think.

Best line: It’s the end of Windows as we know it, and I feel fine.

Jodi talks about the new house we just signed a contract on (woo-hoo!), and laments the lack of information on the site for our previous house. Sorry folks, that’s the way it happens sometimes.

Seriously - as Jodi asays, we’ll try and get some pics up somewhere of the old place, and of the new place once we’re moving in. It’s a great place, and we got a good deal on it.

Dave linked to my comment about IDL in non-typed scripting environments, which is cool. I know I’ve gotten 50 or so hits from it. The link is appreciated - flow is nice. But I’d also like to know what Dave thinks of my idea, since it’s relevant to his work and that of others in the scripting community.

I think sometimes we bloggers get on a roll, linking and blurbing, and it’s easy to link to something in a very neutral “here it is, I have no opinion” manner. This is not a knock on Dave at all, it’s something I do a good bit, and have seen many others do.

Maybe we need to take stock, and put a little more effort to make sure the “personal” shows up in our “personal web sites”.

Jim is “urgently in need of work”. If you need an awesome coder, a great mentor, or all-around great guy in your company, check him out.

Be aware - Jim needs to work remotely, and he’s by far the one I would bet one if I could hire a teleworker. He’s motivated, creative, and productive.

This is excellent news. The Woz is starting a new company (“Wheels of Zeus”, aka “wOz”)to make wireless consumer handhelds, to “help everyday people track everyday things”.

Good luck, Woz!

Check this out. “The iMac’s owner managed to access his stolen machine remotely, wrote a script to set the AOL client to dial his home number, which gave him a caller ID trace.” [via AccordionGuy]