When
· Naughties
· · 2006
· · · March
· · · · 13 (3 entries)
Feed Breakage · Error analysis is important. When you build operating systems, you examine crashlogs. When you run search engines, you look at the searches that produced zero results. When you run a Feed Validator, you look at what kinds of mistakes people make. Then, you have fun writing about it.
Puzzling IDE Evidence · Eclipse’s Ian Skerrett reports that their market share is up to 65% and growing, and that NetBeans sank in the last year, based on a plausible-looking survey from BZ Research (publishers of SD Times and Eclipse Review). David Berlind is thinking about me buying him dinner next year. But wait: Roman Strobl ripostes, showing the numbers of unique instances of NetBeans that are used enough to be calling into the update center looking for patches; and it shows quite a different picture. First, this is a genuinely interesting statistical anomaly. I don’t think for a second that either Ian or Roman is lying; there are some good suggestions as to what might be going on in both Ian’s and Roman’s comments. Second, I love this competitive spirit; when engineers try to top each other, customers win.
5✭♫: Rock n Roll Animal · The last five-star piece, from two weeks ago, was about the Cowboy Junkies. They covered Sweet Jane on their excellent The Trinity Sessions album, and Lou Reed was quoted as saying that their version was definitive. He’s wrong; his own take on this 1974 live set is at another level entirely. So is much of the record. If you had to name the greatest live rock record of all time, well you couldn’t, but if you had to name the top five, this would be one: it shows how hard rock ought to be played. There are some problems: it’s kind of bombastic in places, and it does glamorize the use of addictive narcotics; but let’s not be picky. (“5✭♫” series introduction here; with an explanation of why the title may look broken.) ...
