via a recent post to the IronPython's Community Interface, Dino Viehland writs:

We have just released IronPython 1.0 Beta 5. This release focuses primarily on improving IronPython’s performance. In this area we’ve reduced working set and startup type by optimizing methods on-demand, improved the speed of attribute access, reduced the overhead in many basic operations (e.g. equality checks and uninitialized checks for local variables), and done other various fine tuning. As usual there are also a good number of bug fixes (primarily focused on community reported bugs). There was also one significant API change in the .NET <-> Python interoperability area:

If we have the following definitions:

We can call the non-generic version with any of:
foo.Bar(1)
foo.Bar.__overloads__[int](1)

And the generic one with any of:
foo.Bar[str](1)
foo.Bar.__overloads__[int][str](1)
foo.Bar[str].__overloads__[int](1)

This is different from previous versions of IronPython where indexing was used to provide access to generic methods.

A more complete list of changes follows at the end.

You can download the release from: MS Download Center

We'd like to thank everyone in the community for your bug reports and suggestions that helped make this a better release: Aaronm, Anthony Tarlano, Eugene Rosenzweig, Shigeru Hemmi, JoeSox, John Platt, Klaus M�ller, Lewis Franklin, Pete Sheill, Rusty Deschenes, and Sanghyeon Seo.

Thanks and keep in touch,
The IronPython Team

More complete list of changes and bug fixes:
============================================
ReflectOptimize methods on-demand
ReflectOptimize hasattr/getattr/setattr and other context aware methods
Improve BigInteger parsing performance
abs(True) and abs(False) fixed to match CPython behavior
os(‘stat’) sets file modes properly now
Bugfix: Setting variables in nt.environ doesn’t propagate to environment
Bugfix: Improve constructing files from streams
ReflectOptimizer inlines type checks for non-convertible types (ICallerContext & UserType)
Optimize uses of Ops.IsTrue(Ops.Equal(… )) to Ops.EqualRetBool to avoid boxing & conversions
Support binding to generic .NET methods and move manual overload resolution __overloads__ dictionary
Use data flow analysis to avoid Uninitialized checks where possible in locals
Optimize generator.next calls to get good performance
Bugfix: IronPython CodeDom cannot round trip 2 buttons on a form
Improve performance of constructing commonly used built-in types
FunctionEnvironment performance improvements
Minor tweaks to casting orders
Avoid TLS where possible in repr
Bugfix: from __future__ import division doesn’t flow into eval in some cases
Bugfix: hasattr raises
Bugfix: need to implement nt.startfile
Bugfix: subclassing Tuple not working
Bugfix: fix resource definitions in generated files
Large namespaces use binary search to find attributes
Bugfix: -i option doesn’t go interactive when exception is raised
SuperConsole now supports Ctrl_C handling as well as basic console
Bugfix: ‘%02d’ % 12 appends a leading zero
Attribute access re-written for significant performance gains
Bugfix: nt module doesn’t implement chdir
ReflectedPackage’s delay load all type loads
Bugfix: atxexit doesn’t work
Bugfix: IP: Cannot use a class from IronPython generated class libraries
Bugfix: Cannot delete variable referenced in nested scope
Bugfix: Support special method names (__int__, __pos__, etc…)
Bugfix: Support for generic & non-generic types of the same name in same namespace
Bugfix: __doc__ strings should reflect how we mangle calling conventions
Bugfix: Update makefiles to include new assembly references

Premature Male-Pattern Baldness

Alex Bosworth's Weblog: Ajax and XSLT in Web Development

I especially like Google's choice to be agnostic about namespaces, as XML namespaces make me want to tear my hair out.

I tell ya... I was this >< close to taking this piece and dissecting it into billion little "Itsy-Bitsy, Teenie-Weenie, Here's A Phreakin' Clue For Freebie" pieces... (and there are about 15 places that, in fact, made me want to rip out my own hair! Just not for the same reasons. [hint: XML NAMESPACES ARE MIND NUMBINGLY EASY TO UNDERSTAND!!!]

That said, here's why I chose not to:

It's FANTASTIC to see that folks that just so happen to share their basic genetic profile with Adam Bosworth, and as such are going to garner both attention and immediatte respect, are coming out and stating what should be PAINFULLY obvious to anyone who's been around this industry long enough to understand that building production applications on top of ANY system that doesn't at VERY LEAST pre-compile to byte-code with debug symbols is just a bad idea all-together... read-eval-print loop (REPL) is GREAT for development, but if we were to expect the folks using our applications to simply accept "just how wonderful a REPL-based life truly is", Liberal Arts and Computer Science would be one-in-the-same in our modern-day curricula. {in fact, one might argue that they ARE one in the same... then again... ;)]

This might be an area that the XSLT processors in browsers can assist, as seen in Johnvey's del.icio.us director.[2] Filtering in XSLT has the potential to sidestep a lot of the Javascript speed barriers, although unfortunately a significant minority of browsers don't have that much support for XSLT.

Okay, I LOVE the general message here... but um... ummmm.... hmmmm.... how should I put this??? ...

Hmmm... ["BREATHE M.! BREEEAAATTHEE DAMN IT!!!"]

Please hold...

[HoldMusic("Lawrence Welk's Greatest 'Elevator Music From Hell' Hits"):Start]
[DEEP BREATH] and
[RELEASE] and...
[HoldMusic("Lawrence Welk's Greatest 'Elevator Music From Hell' Hits"):Stop]

Okay, we're back...

Firstly, how 'bout a HUGE round of applause for Lawrence Welk and ALL of...

Oh wait, I'm sorry... What I meant was,

"How 'bout a swift kick-in-the-a$$ to whomever it was that decided

-- "Let's get an orchestra to play songs that should have never made it on to vinyl in the first place, and yet because it's our 'users' priviledge to be in OUR good graces in the first place, everyone should simply smile and accept the fact that its not THEIR choice, and instead OURS, what music they get the priviledge of listening to in the first place, only when WE say THEY can...

Oh, and only on the devices WE say they can listen to them on as well... YEEHA!" --

and thought "hey, that's a great idea!"

Okay then, now where were we...

Oh yes... firstly,

"Filtering in XSLT has the potential to sidestep a lot of the Javascript speed barriers"

Sometimes its so obvious its painful, huh?

Yeah...

Alright then... next up,

"a significant minority of browsers don't have that much support for XSLT."

Ummm.... "a significant minority of browsers"?

"a significant minority of browsers"??

"a significant minority of browsers"???!!!

["BREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTHEE DAMN IT, BREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTHEE!!!"]

[HoldMusic("Lawrence Welk's Greatest 'Elevator Music From Hell' Hits"):Start]
Ahhh, HELLL NO!!!! THATS IT...
[DEEP BREATH] and
[RELEASE] and...
[DEEP BREATH] and
[DEEP BREATH] and
[DEEP BREATH] and
[DEEP BREATH] and
["Not so fast or your'e going to hyperventilate and pass out"] and
[DEEP BREATH] and
[RELEASE] and...
[RELEASE] and...
[HoldMusic:Error("System can not loc;
[SYSTEM:CRASH(REASON("There seems to be some sort of foot or somethin' lodged in the side of me.")] and...
[RELEASE] and...
[RELEASE] and...
[RELEASE] and...
[DEEP BREATH:SIGH(:type("relief"))] and...

Okay then, I feel better...

Alright, with that now in the past, how about I just leave at this,

That's like the most twisted, back-a$$wards way to promote "Google's choice to be agnostic about namespaces" as there is nothing thats MORE wrong with Google's AJAXSLT project that its current "agnostic" approach to XML Namespace support as part of the Javascript XPath engine portion of this project.

That said, I can understand how using the term "significant minority" can be *somewhat* justifiably used in the current snapshot of browser-based XSLT support, but before Opera's recent "browsers-that-still-matter" resurgance they were the only browser left that didn't provide an implementation of XSLT, and while I understand the need for and am EXTREMELY grateful that Google decided to create the AJAXSLT project, using the term "significant minority" at this stage of the game???

Well, I'll just keep my mouth to the <Oxygen /> tank for a bit longer... how's that for compromise ;) :D

Enjoy your Sudden [But Shouldn't Have Been] Realization That "You Mean I Can Replace ALL Of This Javascript Code With One XSLT Instruction Element and Function and I Could Have Been Doing This In 97% of ALL Browsers In Use For The Last Four Years???!!! .... DAMN IT!!!!!!!!!!"-enhanced Day! :)

---
<xml:namespaces level-of-diffuculty="EASY, EASY, EASY!"> : What makes them difficult is not XML Namespaces in and of themselves, its the fact that by only embracing enough of XML Namespaces to get your XML to properly transform without spending a few minutes reading a Jeni Tennison XML Namespaces tutorial forces you to learn bad "over-thinking" habits.</xml:namespaces>

[PLEASE NOTE: Please don't post any "technically using the XML namespace is..."-type comments or I will "Technically" beat your silly little Virtual Smart A$$ ;) (smile and know that your Momma still loves you despite your "Itsy-Bitsy Teenie-Weenie 'M. Just Kicked My A$$', That Meanie!" whining self. :D]
---

[2] - I took the liberty to hack the link and point instead to the same project listed in the "Code of the Day" section of this blog]

In addition to that legal requirement, there are some strong recommendations that aren't legally required. You should make it clear to your users that you are using Swish-e in your product by listing Swish-e in your documentation and, if you have a web site, with an easy to find link on your web site. (Consider using the Swish-e logo). You must feel guilt if you add features or bug fixes to the software and do not inform other users of swish-e via the Swish-e discussion list, and you should think about buying the developers a beer. Or two. Or until they say 'stop'.

Smile :)

Rory says a lot of what I would have said in criticism of the passion post I found via Mini-Microsoft and does it with a lot less bitterness than I could ever muster. If you ask me, Microsoft could do with a lot less of its so-called passionate employees.

I like this post from Dare (in fact, it seems to me that Dare's been on quite the roll lately)

If there is one thing in life I have been accused of most often (and I've been accused of a LOT of things ;) its being passionate.

I've always taken this as a compliment, although its not always meant as one.

Not my problem.

What is my problem?

What would be a compelling reason?

If the passion I exude did more destructive damage than it did constructive good.

Of course, every situation provides a different context as to what "damage" applies to.

Did someone die?

Nope. Not by my hand.

Did someone lose their job?

Not if they didn't deserve to.

Did someones feelings get hurt?

Sometimes.

Is avoiding the chance that someones feelings might get hurt enough to get me shutup?

FUCK NO!

Why? Do I just not care about peoples feelings?

If I have EVER come across that way to any of you, then for this I am TRULY sorry! Thats not what I would EVER want someone to believe. In regards to caring about people...

People are what matter the most to me.

But the politically correct bullshit that its better to say nothing than to risk offending someone or hurting someones feelings is just that: Bullshit.

Please don't take that to mean that I feel it's okay if you're racist or a hater of persons of any type (meaning, for example, there are white people who are snobs, bitches, complete fucks, trash, good, great, AMAZING, Mortal God's, etc...) except for those who wish harm upon others, to then act upon this wish -- but even then, if at all possible you should love the sinner and hate the sin, but like I said.. if at all possible. Sometimes thats a pretty hard thing to do, and no ones perfect. But, as usual, I digress...

Here's the point: I can see both sides of the argument that Dare has pointed out, although I will admit that I side more with Rory's argument than I do mini-m$ (you'll need to read the above linked article to understand what I mean.) And I can't help but laugh at Rory's "Enthusiasthma" label. I dig that (and not because I don't think that the label can be applied to me... sometimes (or even often times) it can. When it does, I learn, I try harder the next time not to make the same mistake... It doesn't always work out that way, but sometimes it does. So I guess thats progress. Progress is a good thing :)

However (and maybe this is a lot of what Dare and Rory believe as well... not sure as it seems theres plenty of room in both of their posts to allow for the fact that, generally speaking, this is how they both feel) finding a balance between being enthusiastic and pesimistic is a required attribute of "Passion."

In fact, this is true about everything... i.e. finding balance.

And I can speak from experience on this one... As mentioned above, It TRULY IS possible to be TOO ENTHUSIASTIC and TOO PESIMISTIC as at various times I have been both. Sometimes, even at the same time. (< not a perfect one-to-one comparison, but it's close enough to showcase the fact that its possible to be too much of both extremes, all at the same time :)

So to summarize...

To understand passion is to understand that, like everything, a balance must be struck if you are to have any hope at being effective.

Oh, and actions speak louder than words.

Yet Another Page From My Personal "The Hard Lessons of Life" SketchBook :)

Enjoy you're (hopefully) less-"Enthusiasthma"-stricken, More Positive Result-Driven Day :)

And when that man is Tim Bray and the person he is inferring his trust works for Microsoft... Well my friends, Tim Bray has just proven once again why I admire him as much as I do:

(which I’ve never quite managed to understand, but Don Box says it’s at the center of WS-everything, and I trust Don)

Wow!

Okay, so the person he's inferring his trust upon is Don Box. Pretty safe bet if you're in the market to infer trust upon someone.

But did I mention Don Box works for Microsoft?

That should be plenty there, so I'll just leave it as-is.

So no one gets fired for Google-like systems architecture. No. Outside the crescendoing Web 2.0 bubble, no one gets hired in the first place if there's the slightest sniff they'd contemplate such a thing. Shame. Web 2.0 is not a bubble (square-one-dot-com) because it's based on near-trivial technology. It's a bubble because there are very few opportunities for arbitrage in a marketplace whose point is to provide customers unprecedented transparency and choice. The very place where such an approach can more consistently provide value is within the enterprise whose information systems have so long been bantustans of baroque and isolated systems. The enterprise is where there is a real chance of information systems revolution from Google-like technology. And it's the one place where no one is looking to build and deploy technology the way Google does.

Yet Another Fantastic Post from Uche. I could not agree more with ALL of this.

Two things to point out:

When Cunningham said working at Microsoft was "hard," he said he meant geographically it was difficult because he lived in Portland, Ore., and had to travel a lot to work.

"Also they had a lot of expectations of me, as in let's do the community thing," Cunningham said. "The community thing is based on trust, but Microsoft was coming out of a period where people did not trust them," he said. "But I'm happy to be working on something else, too. And in the end my interest is in developers being able to create and to try to add to that creation."

However, part of the attraction to work at Microsoft for Cunningham was "to get to know and understand Microsoft, and I have nothing but respect for them."

Indeed, Cunningham said of Microsoft: "They practice software development in its highest form."

And though Microsoft is slow to adopt the community model of development, they are headed for it, Cunningham said.

"They have to inch toward this community style development, otherwise it would be irresponsible to their stock holders," Cunningham said. "What they do and say is in the best interest of their stockholders. … Microsoft has to be more cautious. And IBM has to be more cautious. Even as a developer in the Eclipse foundation there's a certain amount of busy work that a developer has to do, like keeping an intellectual property log and stuff like that. But this is what you have to do."

I like that. Why? Because it showcases the fact that Microsoft understands at least two things:

- You can't break your own knee caps.
- You can change the way you do business.

Hopefully that will just make sense, so I won't ellaborate.

Point Two : In a recent private email thread, Uche and I came to realize that we had both come to the same conclusion about how to develop a decentralized Atom data feed synchronization engine.

Step One: Make it SIMPLE!
Steo Two: Let BitTorrent deal with the complexities.
Step Three: Keep it SIMPLE!

How does this relate to the "Complex Systems vs. System Complexities" title.

Complex Systems: Systems so complex, it takes a room full of PhD's just to make sense of even the tiniest portion.

System Complexities: Not everything contained within a simple system can be simple. But by minimizing the complexities, pushing them into just one or two off-the-shelf solutions (like BitTorrent) life suddenly becomes livable again. Instead of spending our time dealing with brittle and/or breakable systems, we instead get to go home at the end of the day and enjoy our lives instead of worrying about what we're going to do if the duct-tape and bailing-wire patch we just built is going to see you through the night.

As Kurt (Cagle) recently pointed out, you can only abstract the complexities away to a certain point. At some point things ARE complex, and there is no simple way around it. But by keeping these complexities contained in a side-effect free manor, instead of patching Yet Another Leak, we're instead patching the tires of our son's and daughter's bicycles, living our lives instead of having them lived for us.

In other words:

When we enjoy life simply, life is simply enjoyable.

(there's that damn recursion again! ;)

Line 6: This is a Google-Reader-specific extension of some sort, and I have no idea what it means, and that’s just fine. Atom requires that software tolerate this kind of thing, which is why we’ll probably never need Atom 2.0 or even 1.0.0.0.1.

You'd have to be somewhat of a fanatical follower of the RSS "babys-mama-drama" to understand why this has me rolling my a$$ around my office floor in convulsive laughter.

Keep em' coming Tim! I need a good laugh and a smile like this every two to three hours such that I can remember why I love this business as much as I do :)

...and we lost. We lost the battle, our desire to change, adapt, create, and be free from ANYTHING that might suggest we live within the confines of someone elses standards.

Folks will increasingly stop creating new XML-based languages at the front-end. Instead, the XML-based semantics will be tunnelled into a small set of existing vocabularies, most notably XHTML, RSS/Atom and ODF.

I'm sorry, but I could not disagree more with EVERYTHING in the above statement.

NEVER STOP CREATING.

That includes XML formats, competitors to XML formats, and things that have nothing to do with XML formats at all. They're are just something you felt like building one day just cuz'

The above statement, and ANY others like it ANGER ME!

Don't Listen. Create.

And don't EVER stop! The very foundation of who we are as human beings can not be defined by the narrow-minded ideas and ideals of 500 years ago, 50 years ago, 5 years ago, or even today, tomorrow, and 5, 50, and 500 years from now. The desire to create, to be something others are not, or create something no one ever has, or just to be different for no other reason than you just feel like being different is what drives the very essence of the who you are, who I am, and who people in whom we will never meet, and in whom could give a rats a$$ about XML or anything like it.

And this comes from someone who actually REALLY LIKES ALL of the XML formats that Sean mentioned. Sean is a brilliant man, please dont take this to mean I think he's suddenly not.

I just dont believe we should EVER insist or suggest, or otherwise confine the imaginations in which we ourselves rely on each and every day to make us feel complete.

I think using Atom, and XHTML, and ODF, and OpenXML, and whatever else puts a smile on your face is what you should decide for yourself to use.

Don't let others make those decisions for you.

Thanks.

Question: Anybody know what happens when you start telling folks to confine themselves to a certain set of ideals? Even when you and I know those ideals are the right way because we've tried a whole bunch of other ways, and they didnt work as well, or at all, or whatever else?

Is there a reason why Lisp was one of the very first computer languages and is now makin a sudden resurgence? Yep.

Why didn't we just listen to our elders back then when they told us "you don't need this language, or that language, or any other language for that matter... you have all you need in Lisp"?

Because we wanted to do things our own way.

Should we have listened?

NO! Because LOTS of good things have been created since then, and lots of bad things too. But it was the human spirit and the desire to try new things, and push against the norm that drove us to push our imagination to the limits.

Why is that suddenly now different just because we recreated Lisp inside of a markup syntax called XML?

Oh wait... firstly, I guess I should preface this with the fact that there is another preview version of IE7 available, cleverly labeled:

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview - released on March 20th

This would, of course, be in replacement for:

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview - not released on March 20th

Of course never wanting to confuse things even further, here's a sample "clarification" follow-up comment to yesterdays announcement:

Beta 2 isn't even out yet and we have a final release later.

So, in other words,

This is not Beta 2, but the second preview release thats leading up to Beta 2, which is labeled "Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview - released on March 20th" which SHOULD NOT be confused with "Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview - not released on March 20th" (and really, how could it be???!!! ;) which will eventually be replaced by Beta 2, to then be followed up with a "final release later."

Q: "final release later."? Does that refer to a final Final release, or a final Beta 2 release?

You know what... Nevermind... I don't want to know.

Okay then.... So, now that we have that all cleared up lets first look at what the Acid 2 test results should look like:

Okay.

Next, "Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview - not released on March 20th":

Huh...

Well, on the positive side, I guess it couldn't get much worse than that, right?

So then lets take a look at "Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview - released on March 20th"

[InnerVoice: Apparently I spoke too soon.]

OuterVoice: Well, the difference is obvious to me...

Any questions?

[InnerVoice: Actually, I personally have several, but at this stage I am in fear of the answer(s) so I'm just going to pretend this all makes sense, and cry myself to sleep a bit later to make up for it. :D]

OuterVoice: Does anybody have a Valium I can borrow?

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Instant Messaging Networks vs. Public Social Networks

Of course, nothing stops the recruiter from just blogging about our relationship or creating a blogroll of "people I'm trying to poach from Microsoft" but that's just her word against mine. With publicly exposing her social network, it is now confirmed that we have some sort of relationship. That's not what I agreed to when I accepted her as an IM contact.

A lot of this is gut feel from a lot of us who use and build these products. However I'd rather err on the conservative side than piss off our users in a crass attempt to increase the usage of one of our features.

Whether this scenario, or any other, the fact that I might have someone on my IM "buddy" list *SHOULD NOT* infer any rights upon that person (who would in turn have me on their contact list) to make this information public in *ANY WAY*.

By forcing me to explicity allow someone to add me to their social network, whether public, semi-public, semi-private, or private, puts that control into MY hands, not theirs. With this in mind the following quote:

and in particular this statement:

Hmmm - we’re about to find out how that works with AIM

... makes me happy to know that I stopped using AIM, more or less, as soon as I started. The reason for stopping really had nothing to do with anything that went beyond taste -- I simply didn't like the look, feel, or function of AIM. MSN Messenger, Yahoo, and now GTalk have always sat well with me in this regard; each for slightly different reasons, but none-the-less, they each look, feel, and function in a way that has kept me as a so called "customer", or member of their network.

I can tell you one thing, if that wasn't the case, or in other words, if I was still a member of AOL's Instant Message (AIM) network, that membership would now be coming to screaching halt.

Maria had a tough go of it in life. Today, it seems she decided enough was enough, ingesting weed killer, bringing an end to the pain and suffering of living a life in which Schizophrenia had taken control.

I never knew Maria. But she will never be forgotten.

The Sudoku solving stylesheet craze has been catching on...

Dimitre Novatchev, creator of FXSL and xsl-list regular, has written a stylesheet (in typical Dimitre style) which attacks the problem from a slightly different angle.

It seems while I wasn't paying attention, Andrew Welch up'd and started a blog.

Welcome Andrew! Subscribed.

Regarding Andrew's post.... I have some more to announce regarding the mentioned Sudoku craze. Hopefully announce that later today.

In the mean time, pay a visit to Andrew's blog and learn a thing or two you didn't already know :)