One of the problems with testing out stuff on yourself is that you can easily screw up your own system. In trying a couple variations on the RSS scheme for Foxcentral.net and FoxForum wiki, I managed to purge my Radio Userland page of any real news, leaving only dozens of my self-generated entries. Hope nothing too interesting happened over the weekend. I’ll have to catch the posts on the replies-to-the-replies, I hope.
Archive | March, 2003
The Lariet.org community wireless effort
Brett Glass has some interesting observations about setting up the first community wireless network. Established in 1993 in Laramie, Wyoming, this not-for-profit group has brought broadband to the community, but faced some serious regulatory and legislative challenges.
FoxCentral.net RSS posting.
Okay, I get it. This stuff’s not so hard. (Beginner’s luck, my pessimistic side thinks). http://www.foxcentral.net has a well-documented WebServices interface. I tap that to get the most recent news, convert the XML returned into the XML required of RSS news aggregators, and post it to the web site. Here’s a sample, unedited:
Long Island, New York – VFP Boot Camp. Long Island, New York – VFP Boot Camp. Limited seating is available for our highly acclaimed VFP Boot Camp, March 18 – 20, 2003 on Long Island, New York. For more information, call 888-904-7900 or email sales@vfpbootcamp.com. [FoxCentral.Net]
Newbieism certified okay! But look out for the marketing trolls!
According to Steven Levy, Dr Pepper is going to use pseudo-weblogs to promote a new milk-type drink they’re coming out with. Doc Searls is quoted as saying it won’t work. I suppose it’s fair play, I borrowed their I’m A Pepper song for the title of an essay I ran saying it’s okay to be new at something. My song goes like this. “I’m a newbie, he’s a newbie, she’s a newbie, we’re all newbies, wouldn’t you like to be a newbie too?” [Scripting News]
A card’s a card, right? PCMCIA. Prism II, they”re all the same, right?
Struggled for a couple hours last night to get a Belkin f5d6020 wireless PCMCIA 802.11b card to work with Redhat 8.0, either with the wlan-ng drivers or the orioco-cs drivers. No joy. (Disclaimer: I am a clueless Linux newbie, but follow directions well and use Google a lot to RTFM). Belkin provides no support on their site for anything other than Win?? drivers. Hope they get a clue.
Finally swapped it out to one of the Windows machines and swapped in a LinkSys card I’d got working earlier.
How about Foxcentral.net?
http://www.foxcentral.net was created by Rick Strahl based on an idea of Ken Levy’s, as a technical proof-of-concept of using Web Services in Visual FoxPro, and also to serve as a bulletin board for the FoxPro community.
Once I’ve gotten a little further along in RSS generation for the FoxForum Wiki, that’s the next place I’ll set my sights…
Dave Winer in 2001: To me Microsoft is a puzzle…
Dave Winer’s perspective on how things got to be the way they are. Two years ago today: “To this day they think the battle over Java was with Sun, when it was really with the developers. Microsoft says they love developers, they live for developers, and at some level I believe them. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I don’t think they have a clue how their actions cripple the developers.” [Scripting News]
FoxForum Wiki: How To Install A VFP Web Service on IIS
FoxForum Wiki RSS, continued. Carl Karsten asks: HowToInstallAWebService. Ok, so I have a W2k box with IIS, and I have a dll that I made from WebServiceExamples. What do I need to do to the IIS box to get this to run? Install VFP runtimes. Is this a good use of ?ISX? If not, what needs to be done? from FoxForum Wiki
VFP 8.0 EULA, continued….
I ordered the *full* version of VFP 8.0 yesterday, to ensure I wouldn’t be violating Microsoft’s noxious requirement that an upgrade discount forbade me from maintaining previous versions on my machine. Ordered it from http://www.foxtoolbox.com, which had a very low price, and will donate 3% of it’s revenues to VFP User Groups.
PHB Logic
“When skills are not a commodity, employees aren’t hot-swappable.” — Paul Graham – linked from Hack the Planet