Amazon is Evil. (updated Tue Nov 22 13:06:32 PST 2011)

Posted Wed, 09/28/2011 - 13:49 by metarobert

I was a bit excited today reading about Amazon's new tablet, the Fire. It got me wondering if I should get Amazon Prime, and that $200 dollar tablet. Very tempting! I'd consider getting rid of Netflix since it might be a better deal given that Prime customers get free streaming. Then a friend mentioned how cool the Silk web browser is. That's the web browser shipping with Amazon's Fire tablet. Hmm, with that browser, Amazon gets ALL of your web traffic in order to "optimize" it for you. What? I browse just fine on my android phone, why would they need to "optimize" browsing on a tablet? That bothers me. It seems like a thin veneer of helpfulness over a large steaming pile of not-anonymous "data collection" This kind of suspicious behavior reminded me that when I removed the amazon app store from my android phone, all of the apps I'd downloaded from the Amazon app store stopped working. How did those apps know? They couldn't all be written to require the app store could they? It's either that or Amazon is putting some hooks in my phone. Either way Amazon's app knows what I'm using, and when, then makes a call home.

I'm pretty well convinced that Amazon has passed the typical amoral corporate line and stepped in to evil territory. Why is the news only chasing after Apple when it blunders, but allowing Amazon to make these kinds of moves?

UPDATE Tue Nov 22 13:06:47 PST 2011: ( To be fair I must mention that since I wrote this post, Amazon has claimed that it anonymizes browsing data from their silk browser. ) Cory Doctor points out more data regarding the losses of freedom Amazon is propagating. Besides taking books back, as Cory points out, they can also disable apps you "own" on your Android phone. In the future they appear to want, you no longer really own the apps and books that you purchase.

Twitterping is working again, and I created htperf

Posted Tue, 08/23/2011 - 15:42 by metarobert

TwitterPing was dead because python stopped running properly on my web server. It was so much trouble getting python working again as a CGI script that I gave up and just re-wrote the "ping" routine in PHP. While I was at it, it just made sense to make it more configurable so that I (or anyone interested) could point it at any web site and get interesting data. They are at http://betwittered.com/twitterping and http://betwittered.com/htperf I added a couple of parameters for hperf. Check out this example:

http://betwittered.com/htperf?url=betwittered.com&pingInterval=90

This will run 3 'pings' every 90 seconds against betwittered.com.

If you want to see a bit of data about how a site is responding, and even watch performance for a while, feel free to give it a try. It's built to make a nice module or fit in the sidebar of a website, feel free to throw it in a frame on any site.

My Sanity Survived, I Think

Posted Sun, 02/13/2011 - 19:33 by metarobert
Well, what passes for sanity in me has survived.  I thought I might throw my computer into the street more than once over the past two weekends.  I had a slideshow working on a site, and had each image doing a lightbox popup when you clicked it.  When you'd close an image, the slideshow would, um, slide left out of the window a bit.  After watching the bug come and go, morph and dodge, and occasionally flip me off, I decided to simply switch from "Colorbox" to "Shadowbow" as the tool to do the lightbox pop-up.  Voila! No bug.  I have to say, I will NOT complain about Colorbox.  It's an outstanding plugin, and I am still not sure of the actual cause of the bug.  Today, I don't care what the cause was, I'm simply walking away with a nice solution and my tail between my legs (so to say)

Rum and Coke, here comes one relieved but beaten down web developer.

Heading home, down the coast

Posted Mon, 01/17/2011 - 18:18 by metarobert

After a long, emotional weekend, we're half way home.

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Our family pets. They have personality.

Posted Fri, 12/03/2010 - 12:46 by metarobert
I could caption these photos, but I think they are funny all by themselves.

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Sunset last night

Posted Sun, 10/10/2010 - 15:56 by metarobert

Taken with my iPhone, so the little slice of moon doesn't show very
well, but still a very nice moment.

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Web Testing Tool: Selenium

Posted Sat, 07/03/2010 - 09:21 by metarobert

A really nice web app testing tool, use the IDE for simple automation, RC when you get more serious. The selenium IDE, a firefox plugin, allows you to just record and playback your actions. You can then add to the script manually, which is also pretty simple. RC is a server that will let you write in multiple languages (e.g. Java, Python, C#...) to create much more complicated tests and reports. Go to http://seleniumhq.org or check out http://www.estevenjones.com/the_blog/2010/01/using-selenium-to-test-your... for a nice, simple tutorial on the IDE.

Ventura Harbor from our hotel room

Posted Sat, 07/03/2010 - 08:57 by metarobert

We spent a couple days relaxing at Ventura harbor and had a very nice view.

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No more Space Shuttle, but did you know...

Posted Sun, 06/20/2010 - 10:58 by metarobert
We (the U.S.) already have a working space plane?  And it's been up a couple of times already?  It surprised me, for sure.  The only thing that made me start to say "yeah, but..." is that it's unmanned.  I'm assuming that this thing can be scaled up, so maybe it could haul people back and forth.  Having been in the Army, I would be surprised if they couldn't already get 200 guys in there (kidding, but they really did haul us around in tight quarters) http://www.space.com/news/secret-x-37-b-space-plane-spotted-by-amateur-astronomers-100522.html
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Good progress today adding more "configurator" like options to a shoppingcart.

Posted Sat, 05/22/2010 - 14:52 by metarobert
I've been adding another layer of complexity to an otherwise completed
shoppingcart app today. It used to build a menu of items, now it's
building a menu of items and configurable options per item. This is
something more tricky than it seems at first.

In this case, I've built Product Groups for all items. Each product
group has one or more End Products associated with it (e.g. Hamburger,
Fries and a Soda) Each product can have a Bill of Materials that a
customer can choose from (e.g. Cheese, Onions, Tomatoes) It quickly
gets complicated to implement.

I'll definitely be relieved when this one is done.

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