Groovy or Goofy?

JavaPro has an article about a new scripting language for Java called Groovy. Just what is so groovy about Groovy? Beats me.

As best I can tell Groovy is just somones idea of a sneaky way to avoid using a compiler and add a few bits of syntaxtic sugar to the Java language.

The former stikes me as pure laziness and really a problem to be solved by better tools and development environments. As anyone who has ever written JSP can contest, its very easy to be able to write real Java code and have it compiled on the fly without ever thinking about the compiler.

The latter strikes me as just pure impatience with the Java Community Process. As anyone who has used Java over a significant period of time, the language is evolving and as of JDK 2 v1.5 now incorporates some very spiffy new language features such as templates, auto boxing, syntaxtic support for iteratorating collections etc. etc. Ultimately most of these new features are just convenience functions to lessen the amount of code we have to type everyday, and the same can be said for Groovy. The most simple of which is not having to type a semicolon. But you know what? Semicolons are in the language for a reason - they improve parsing of code and error reporting.

Every "clever" little addition that someone threw into Groovy actual helps make it more obscure, confuses developers, increases the number and difficulty of debugging errors, and ultimately just saves a bit of typing. The multiplicity of scripting languages just goes to show that many, many people have thought that they could fix all the problems with every other language, scripting or not and truely get it right. In the end we have as many scripting languages as the world has religions and ultimately the same result - every one of them thinks its "the one" and none of them is actually "the one". If that's what scripting is all about then to be honest I'd rather be using Java or .Net than lazily scripting my way to confusion.

I'll second that...

I've been thinking of writing about all the fuss about Google's Gmail service for a while now. However Extremetech got there before me. In "Gmail: Stop the Whining" Jim Lynch covers pretty much everything I would have said (apart from the digs about politics, which are in this case irrelevant to the point). Really, Google have been very upfront with detailing exactly what they are going to do and are offering anyone willing to accept the ads a very large gifthorse - just like they do with their main Google search service.

So stop whinging and don't look it in the mouth or it may just run away!

Besides, why does anyone believe that the sort of targeted advertising Google proposes is any more heinous than what current agencies like Double-Click try to do? In fact cookie tracking is far more surreptitious and underhand than Google's up front policy. Furthermore, as the author points out, why does anyone assume current webmail services are not scanning, analysing and monitoring email? They do - they scan for spam, abuse, illegal traffic and use that contravenes their service agreement. All these are done somewhat transparently without you really thinking about it.

Just because Gmail have your email address there is an assumption that they'll be using all that scanned info to target you with spam or something like that - however the goal is the dissociation of advertising from email itself, by providing it outside the context of email itself and as part of the reader. This makes it easier from them to remove genuine spam, and means that if you ever get fed up of Gmail then you can just go to some other email provider exactly as you would with any other provider. As the author points out, if you really want privacy and anonymity you really should be going somewhere other than free webmail accounts.

Also it blows my mind that people get so upset about Google's upfront policy of scanning email for personal gain to the user vs. the complacent acceptance of the total and undisclosed snooping that the Patriot act allow the government to do now? Google gets to scan just your email which is a largely anonymous moniker that you create for yourself with, if you so desire, little or no connection with your real world identity. However thanks to Patriotic I Uncle Sam gets to secretly check your actual financial information, read your actual email, tap your actual phone and basically lay claim to any personal information they can lay their hands on - and all without you ever being informed its happening or ever did happen and without any legal review or control. Get real - if you whine about Google you should be pissing your pants about Patriot!

Finally what everyone has missed so far is that Google's goal is to try and make the advertising as relevant to you as possible and hence hopefully as acceptable as forced advertising could be. You might even find yourself liking the prescence of targeted ads that are highly relevant to your needs and desires. It has long been said that the way to stop irrelevant and irritating spam and junk mail is to tell marketers as much about yourself as possible and then they can avoid sending you irrelevant advertising. Google is just trying to find a way to do that without you actually having to fill out a form. If we assume Google is abiding by their privacy agreement then really, what is the harm - seize the gift horse and run with it, you might even have a pleseant ride!

That is my big prediction - that Gmail will end up being a runaway success and in a couple of years it will be both highly immitated and lauded as a great innovation for targeted advertising. As such it could usher the death knell for the typical broadcast spam we get in our regular email, on webpages, radio and TV channels and in public spaces. Where ever advertising is Google will be able you to link your private Gmail advertising profile into that context and have the generic untargeted ads replaced with targets ones at tremendous value to advertisers and hopefully a tremendous compensation to you. Remember more effecitve advertising means less dollars wasted, cheaper products, fewer product failures, and more effective evolution of successful products.

Real Player exposed

I was chuffed, yes chuffed I say, to read on Wired News that I'm not the only one that thinks Real Player is a pain in the butt to get, install and a veritable nuisance after its installed. According to their article radio stations who use Real Audio to stream their shows are besiged by listeners complaining about the Real Player program required to hear their programmes online. Real insisted on making the free Real Player program extremely difficult to download and then made it almost viral in it behavior after installation with frequent message center popups and default hijacking of all media types.

As radio stations started investigating Microsofts Windows specific WMP format, its was apparently the nationally famous Car Talk show that finally issued the ultimatum to Real Player and got them to actually make downloading Real Player reasonably straightforward. However, I can report that as of today Real Player 10 "Gold" while only requiring two clicks to download, still has default install behavior that hijacks all audio content types from your current media player, and insists on installing its irritating and irrelevant "Message Center".

Unofrtunately Real Player is I'm afraid, still a necessary evil, since its the only widely used cross platform audio streaming platform. I wish this would change so that radio stations had something other than WMP and RP to choose from. Some kind soul needs to create good quality open source audio streaming software and players that we can all use and be done with the Real Player vs. Windows Media Player battle.

VoIP - wot no security?

Its seems like an eternity since I first heard about Internet telephony, and only slightly more recently Voice Over IP (VoIP). In the early days Internet telephony was achieved with homebrew software of little complexity. It wasn't long before people figured out that combining it with freely available encryption technology could yield a very secure phone replacement. However, although a flurry of commercial IP telphony products soon became available their call quality left a lot to be desired and they still had the disadvantage you usually could not call a regular phone from them.

Then along came the VoIP standard and we all held our breath and waited, and waited. Now finally, long after we expired from asyphixa, VoIP is actually making it into the mainstream thanks to another little technology called SIP. SIP is Session Initiation Protocol and solved the problem of connecting VoIP based phones to the public telephone network. Now you can actually buy VoIP service from AT&T, furthermore Vonage and Packet8 have been offering high quality service to consumers for some time now. Vonage can even transfer your land line to their service with no number change. Brilliant. But my question remains, where's the encryption?

I mean to ask, if my web surfing can have optional encryption (SSL), if my WiFi has optional encryption (WEP, WPA), and if one assumes people might actually have confidential or private conversations then why doesn't my VoIP phone have a nice big "Scramble" button on it, just like in the spy movies?

My guess is, that the assumption was that security would be handled in the network layer and it wasn't at all the business of VoIP to deal with. Granted if you only make VoIP calls within you company over its private network, or on its VPN, then that is the case, well assuming no one in your company is evesdropping. But what about all us poor consumers whose packets are destined to spill out into that big fuzzy and notoriously insecure cloud called "The Internet"?

My guess is also that the acceptance of VoIP phone service providers by the FCC and government would be a lot less friendly if it included encryption. All of a sudden your humble desk phone might actually be intercept proof and would be branded a WMD. Your VoIP phone would be banned just like the box cutter in the desk tidy beside it. If anything VoIP as it is probably makes tapping into the conversation of your average phone call as easy, if not easier than it ever was before, and all without a wire tap. Just think about all the vulnerabilities of your a home computer system - just one mistake in the WiFi, operating system, firewall or application security configuration (assuming they are not inherently insecure) and your entire system is jepordized and hence any data that ends or originates at it.

If you don't believe me just think about how simple, dumb viruses manage to wreck havoc time after time after time. And think if instead of just crashing your computer, erasing your hard drive, or sending dumb emails out on the net they instead quietly installed a keyboard monitor into your system. Then every single keystroke you typed was relayed to an external entity. Before long they'd have your email account password, bank password, social security number, all your personal information and your identity would be gone in an eyeblink. Furthermore they could pick up the password to your VoIP terminal and router and reprogram them. So when you pick up the VoIP phone to call the police and complain your identity has been stolen I wouldn't count on the call going to the right destination...

So please, wouldn't it be nice if security and privacy of VoIP was a higher concern for the masses before all our phones become just another casualty on the Internet Insecurity Highway.