Somebody asked me recently for a good non-technology analogy for the difference between web sites and programs. I thought about it for a little while, and I concluded: Web sites are like bubble gum and programs are like antibiotics. Some companies might sell bubble gum products with plenty of bubble gum flavoring but no antibiotic properties; while other companies might sell antibiotics with no bubble gum flavor; finally, some companies may sell bubble gum flavored antibiotics. Web sites themselves can be thought of as external and cosmetic , whereas the programs are active ingredients .

If you can get past the opening line, this is mostly a high quality, informative article about how to make money starting a business that develops Free Software. As the article states, "clearly, making money from free software is possible." The Money In Open-Source Software | TechCrunch

Serafino Software™ is developing: Snap Screen App™ Takes screenshots at random intervals and sends them to a predetermined recipient; for example, to help monitor children's web usage .

Several times I've seen this "pattern": if (object != null) { return object; } return null; I just don't think it's very well thought out.

This was taken from real code :D The identifiers have been changed. if (isCertainCondition()) { // Fine so far... } else if (!isCertainCondition()) { // Are you kidding me?? // ... // Now for the clincher... } else { // ... }

I just found this code that I thought was humorous (identifiers changed to protect intellectual property): private boolean allFoosAreBarsOrBazs() { for (Foo foo: foos) { if (!(foo instanceof Bar)) { if (!(foo instanceof Baz)) { return false; } } if (!(foo instanceof Baz)) { if (!(foo instanceof Bar)) { return false; } } } return true; }

I am now an employee of First National of Nebraska, as a Programmer Analyst. The views and opinions expressed through this blog and my other online communications, do not represent the views of First National or its affiliates. They are my own personal views and opinions, which are not necessarily the same as those of my employer.

I am currently happy to be a full-time employee of Client Resources, Inc., as a User Interface Consultant for a contract with First National Bank.

Here are a few examples, to demonstrate a little bit of our past software development work: Well-Being Ideas Software Demo : A cloud-based, Web 2.0, social networking, SaaS application, adapted from the Open Source Pligg CMS (Developed while employed at a corporation) Pligg CMS Contributions : I became a member of the official Pligg development team, and I was cited for significant contributions to the latest version (Contributed while employed at a corporation) PTL : Web-to-Desktop Application Framework (Incomplete) Walk In The Light™ : Screenshot E-Mailer in Java (Incomplete) (Many of our past software development projects are not available in our public portfolio, right now. Some projects are unavailable because we developed them for private clients, or because they are components of more complex applications.)

For the purpose of demonstrating some of our web design abilities, here are some web sites that we have designed. We have used technologies including Blogger, WordPress, Dreamweaver, The GIMP, Picasa Web Albums, and code in XHTML/CSS and JavaScript: Exposition 101 Podcast Vital Signs Ministries Resources (Someone else has modified some aspects of this web site, since we designed it.) Willow Pond - Bed & Breakfast (Widescreen Website) Building Energy Solutions (Archived) Dr. Gerald R. Wagner Director, Institute for Wellbeing Management (Please note that some aspects of these web sites may have been designed to detailed specifications, so that some of the contents and formatting, which were specifically requested by the clients, may not be a complete representation of our unique methods and abilities.)

We have recently updated the pages for the business on LinkedIn , on Google Plus , and on Facebook . If you use any of these social networks, then please make sure to check out our pages at these links! Also, notice our new links to those pages, on the bottom and on the right side of this web site.

Abstract The purpose of this document is to address the ethical quandary of whether it is right to watch Copyrighted videos on YouTube without a license. The paper introduces the issue by defining what YouTube is and what unlicensed videos are. Next, a brief summary of background information is presented, including the basics of how YouTube works, and how copyright licensing works for YouTube videos. After the introduction and background information, the paper addresses counterarguments before presenting the main points of the paper’s arguments. Counterarguments that are addressed include the value of copyright laws and the question of following laws that a person does not agree with. Other counterarguments include who has the responsibility to ensure that people have the proper rights to the video, and whether the viewer can blame the artist, the host (YouTube), or the uploader. Finally, the paper succinctly presents a few of arguments against viewing unlicensed YouTube videos, inclu...

It is awesome that the new browser wars are not IE versus Netscape, but the which Non-Microsoft browser is better, and Microsoft hardly in the running, trying to play catch-up. It is interesting to note that IE is based on the old NCSA Mosaic code. I used both Mosaic and Netscape in the early days, and Netscape was the advanced browser with features like plugins and JavaScript. Then Microsoft duped the courts into thinking that they did not understand technology like Microsoft does, and that "a web browser is an integral part of an Operating System" (at which time Windows itself was not really an Operating System, but just a graphical shell for DOS). So they used their classical model of innovation, where they take technology somebody else developed, make their own low quality adaptation, throw millions of dollars in marketing behind their version, and spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt through misinformation and misrepresentation of the facts. Once they gave a bundled ver...

Here's another winner I found in actual (PHP) code that I was working on: if ($groups) { foreach($groups as $group) { /* ... */ } } Good thing they wrapped that foreach loop in that if , eh? We wouldn't have wanted to waste time looping through the whole ( empty ) array, if the array were empty in the first place, now would we?? :-D

Look at this hilarious PHP code I just ran into! if(array_search($word, $word_array) == true){ return true; } else { return false; } :-D

I thought you might find this programming mistake I made to be somewhat humorous. public MyJSplitPane getMyJSplitPane() { MyListener myListener; MyArray[] myArray; myArray = source1.getMyArray(); if (myJSplitPane == null) { myListener = getMyListener(); myJSplitPane = new MyJSplitPane(myArray, myListener); } return myJSplitPane; } /** * @return Returns the myListener. */ private MyListener getMyListener() { MyJSplitPane myJSplitPane; if (myListener == null) { myJSplitPane = getMyJSplitPane(); myListener = new MyListener(source2, myJSplitPane, this); } return myListener; }

I just thought I'd share what I thought about a couple of differences between JavaScript and VBScript. Loop Difference I think it's better that JavaScript doesn't have a do...until loop. The do...until loop seems kind of superfluous to me, since the same can easily be accomplished with a while loop. For example, these two are equivalent: Do Until (x) ' do something Loop while (!x) { // do something } Comments Difference Notice the difference between the comments in the examples above. That was the other difference I wanted to mention. I tend to think that faster is better, and it's faster to type the single quote (') than it is to type 2 forward slashes (//). On the other hand, JavaScript provides for making part of a line a comment anywhere in the code, like this: if (x /* == true */) As you can see, the end parenthesis ")" comes after the comment. I don't know if VBScript provides any way of making comments like that. Does anybody els...

Would you believe that this is almost exactly the same as some JavaScript code that I found, that somebody actually wrote? Tell me, what's wrong with this code? Could you think of any more concise way to write it? All we need is the highest version number we can use to create the activex object without throwing an exception. var curr = -1; for (var n1 = 1; n1 >= 1 && curr == -1; --n1) { for (var n2 = 9; n2 >= 0 && curr == -1; --n2) { for (var n3 = 9; n3 >= 0 && curr == -1; --n3) { for (var n4 = 9; n4 >= 0 && curr == -1; --n4) { for (var n5 = 9; n5 >= 0 && curr == -1; --n5) { var version = "" + n1 + n2 + n3 + "_" + n4 + n5; try { var versioned = new ActiveXObject( "JavaPlugin." + version); curr = new Number( "" + n1 + n2 + n3); ...

If you've never heard of Extreme Programming (XP) , you probably just won't get it. As a matter of fact, you might not get it anyway, but that's ok. XD is a deliberate and disciplined approach to driving motor vehicles. If everybody just tries to drive whatever way, it will take longer to get anywhere, and there's more of a danger of a crash. That's why you must have and follow a driving methodology . First of all, it's absolutely essential to have lots of "Call Up Meetings," which involve everybody calling and talk to each other on cellphones while driving. Never drive without them. "Collective Mechanical Ownership" is another critically important concept of XD. It means that any driver must have access to change the mechanics in the vehicle at any time. So if one person wants to get in and rewire the starter, or another person decides to change the spark plugs, there doesn't have to be centralized oversight of all that. And don't...

XML is good- but only for some things. XML is very good at describing ordered lists, documents like they will be printed on paper, and simple trees, like family trees. For other things, XML is really bad. All other computer data with a more abstract nature has trouble conforming efficiently to the tree hierarchy of XML. Programs which use XML to describe and retrieve all kinds of data indiscriminately, suffer intense processing delays- particularly while attempting to traverse an ordered list to retrieve unordered data. The strongest feature of XML is that it's very close to the ubiquitous HTML. It's easy for many people to learn about XML because they're used to HTML. Data described by XML can be transformed into HTML very easily. XML works great to describe lists of items, like feeds of syndicated content for things like a news feed, stock quotes, or a series of audio or video episodes. It's great at describing outlines, with bigger sections broken down into smaller ...