26 Apr 2003
While looking for some python web framework that might work under mod_python, twisted.web, and cgi on google I ran across this post which descibes my thoughts on what’s wrong with PHP, (and though he doesn’t mention it) ASP, as well as mod_python:
The problem with the first should be obvious, it works well, but you end up reimplementing a lot of stuff that you just feel should be done well once, and then reused. The problem with the second is more subtle. It has to do with all such systems I’ve looked at consisting of a huge network of interdependent objects, where you have to take it or leave it, there’s no way to reuse a simple part of the system without also using the rest.
…
But there’s no denying that PHP is a language that can be picked up by a newbie and in 10 minutes, he’ll be doing rudimentary web stuff with it. Compare to Python, which is extremely easy to pick up for a newbie when it comes to ordinary scripting, but when you want to do web stuff, you’re stuck with configuring handlers for mod_python and doing all sorts of strangeness. Of course, it’s easy when you know it, but how many web development newbies are lost because of this?
At work I’m beating Commersus into something is respectable. I hope they take my patches.
#python
25 Apr 2003
Via /.: Forbes: Shortchanged:
Front-page headlines in June 2000 hailed a historic deal that dramatically cut phone rates for the nation’s consumers. The Federal Communications Commission, in persuading the Baby Bells to slash the access fees they charge long-distance carriers for routing calls to their local lines, said it would save customers $3.2 billion a year. The FCC’s claim to have enacted “the largest rate cut in the history of federal telephone regulation” was the New York Times’ lead story.
The true saving, it turns out, fell far short of that. While the Bells agreed to chop their access fees, they also won the right to offset that reduction by boosting flat monthly fees charged to local customers. These offsetting fee increases now approach $5 billion a year and, even in a world of telecom deflation, have sent local phone bills climbing. Today customers of Verizon (nyse: VZ - news - people ), the biggest of the four surviving Bell companies, see the $72 annual fee–up $30 a year per line so far–listed as the “FCC line charge” on their phone bills, though the Bell gets the cash.
…
Now some factions are pushing regulators to take a harder look inside this can of worms. In February a small watchdog group, TeleTruth, petitioned the Securities & Exchange Commission to launch an investigation. A coalition of 42 consumer groups, irked by a California state audit that accuses SBC of overcharging customers by $350 million, has filed a plea with the FCC. It demands:”When will the Commission systematically determine if violations of accounting requirements … have resulted in interstate overcharges, not only in California, but in all states in which SBC conducts its operations?” It calls the missing $5 billion in gear “the tip of the iceberg.”
I have been very bad on following up my commitment to report on this story. Truth is I got my DSL and forgot the fact that we’ve all really been paying for T3 speeds for years now.
22 Apr 2003
RESTblog is blogging interface done right. No more silly xmlrpc. I think I’ll steal the interface specs and implement it on top of Twisted.
22 Apr 2003
I just GeoURL’ed this page. In doing so I found my house on ACME Mapper.
21 Apr 2003
Getting a whole political structure running inside of a computer network sounds like some interesting futuristic thing, that one day we’ll have. I’m now thinking that this is the only way to bring democracy to the developing world. This idea popped up reading /. comments on wiring Senegal. Here’s a great one:
I had a friend named Martin who was an expatriate from Sierra Leone. He worked with me at IBM. Talented guy, college educated. He spent a lot of his time rounding up junk computer equipment (what we’d consider junk) and shipping it to Sierra Leone. He’d go back and visit occasionally.
I asked him - if people can use these computers (implied literacy and education), then why can’t they form up a westernized culture and enrich themselves, at least to the extent of getting decent housing and food self-sufficiency. His answer was that the lacking required factor was law and order. The leaders fleece the country, selling off natural resources at cut-rate to benefit western corporations. Eventually the enraged local youth (of a political bent) get fed up and revolt, and stuck in the middle are all the regular people of which this mythical culture would be fashioned.
What’s the answer, I said. He shook his head. He does what he can.
We need to give this middle class of people oversight to their government. Every dollar the govt. spends should be logged and available to all citizens in real time. Every deal made needs to a web page with a comment forum at the bottom. Office holders will be tracked by whuffle.
I just wrote down on my TODO list in the “Net” section: “Nation scalable admin system for gov’t based on capabilites”
#ideas