FireBug

A couple days ago I posted about a FireFox extension that gives you a live JavaScript REPL running inside the currently loaded web page. Since then, I stumbled across Firebug, which IMHO may just be the greatest web development extension for Firefox since … err.. well since the Firefox Web Developer extension!. Firebug allow you to open a panel across the bottom of your Firefox window that gives you a ton of functionality including inspecting the HTML of any highlighted part of your currently loaded web page, inspecting registered Javascript event handlers, etc. It even includes a very impressive JavaScript debugger and profiler. Check out this video for an overview!

A REPL for Mozilla

This looks like it’ll be a great way to experiment with JavaScript and the DOM. It’s a REPL (Read Eval Print Loop) for Mozilla. You can telnet into an interactive command prompt *within* your currently loaded web page!

Lua?

I just recently found out about the programming language Lua. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of it before, but apparently it’s used as a scripting language by a lot of game developers. Supposedly it’s used in World of Warcraft, Grim Fandango, Escape from Monkey Island and other. There’s a .net bridge for Lua called LuaInterface. There’s a port of Lua to the PSP, and a port to the Nintendo DS. There are a couple tutorials on using Lua with C# and .net here and here.

Upstream proxy authentication with squid

Thanks to this hint Macosxhints.com, I’ve finally found a way to get programs that don’t support proxy authentication (like Ruby’s Gem, Perl’s CPAN, etc) to work behind the authenticating proxy at work. The article is for MacosX, but it works just as well under Linux. The short summary is that you can install a local Squid proxy, then configure Squid to forward all request to the upstream proxy. Squid handles the authentication, just configure your applications to use the local Squid proxy (without authentication). I tried it this evening with Gem, and it works great!

One caveat: This works with proxies that use HTTP basic authentication, I don’t think it’ll work with NTLM authentication (MS-Proxy).

NY Times fearmongering about recruiters searching MySpace and Facebook

Via Slashdot, I found the following article from the New York Times about recruiters and HR departments supposedly researching prospective candidates using social networking sites like MySpace. When articles like this first started coming out about employers “googling” prospective candidates, I used to worry a bit about it. But I don’t anymore. For one, I think that the writers of these articles are *vastly* exagerating how common this is. “Googling” someone you know sounds easy enough but in practice it turns out that most people have very common names. Doing a Google search for my own name, for example, turns up lots of results, 99.9% of which are NOT me. IMHO, any prospective employer stupid enough not to realize the danger of finding the wrong “Joe Smith” is not worth working for.

I’m also not sure I’d want to work for someone who is that willing to spy on my private life and judge my off work behavior by on the job standards.

And of course, admission of illegal drug use didn’t stopped either of our last two US Presidents from getting their jobs.

Microsoft to acquire Softricity?

This is interesting.  I just read that Microsoft is looking to buy Softricity.  Softricity makes an interesting virtualization product that does “application virtualization”.   Basically, you run only one OS, but each application runs in a protected “sandbox”.  Each application can have conflicting DLL’s (for example), and are otherwise unable to affect each other.  An obvious benefit from a stability and security standpoint, but they go further and use their technology to stream applications over the network to allow them to be installed “on demand”.  It sounds interesting, and MS acquiring them would suggest we’ll be seeing this in future version of Windows or of SMS.

One of the things I’ve hated about having to move from a Mac to Windows at work is how completely kludgetastic the installation and management of applications is on Windows by comparison to the Mac.  The example I always like to give people is that I was able to backup my Mac by merely copying my home folder and the Applications folder to an external hard drive.  The I reformatted my Mac and was able to restore by just copying the home folder and Applications folder back to the local hard drive.   With the exceptions of my Cisco VPN client and Virtual PC, Every single application on my Mac simply worked without a re-install.   Compare that to the nightmare of trying to figure out where a Windows applications has dropped it’s bits and pieces around your system.  

On the PC, it’s virtually impossible to move an application from one system to another or to restore an application that you’ve backed up.  The result is that to move your applications to a new PC, to move them to a new hard drive, or to move them back to your system after reformatting is virtually impossible.   Instead, you’ve got to go through the timeconsuming process of re-installing everything.   This was painful enough back in the day when all apps came from physical media, but these days have the stuff on my computer is downloaded from the internet, and even those applications that did come on media (Windows, Office, etc) will require a lengthy process of downloading updates and service packs after I re-install them.   It’s just so….. primative.

It sounds like the Softricity technology could potentially allow for application install/deinstall on Windows with a simplicity that’s at least similar to OSX app bundles,  but with the added advantage of runtime isolation.  We’ll see what the reality pans out to be.