dsandler.org

It looks like the open-sourced Binder (the fancy multithreading component framework underneath Palm OS 6, which began its life as BeIA 2.0 during the final months of Be, Inc.) has finally been officially released:

Contributing to the Open Source Community - ACCESS and PalmSource have contributed Open Binder, a component object framework, similar in general concept to DCOM and CORBA, but better scaled for use on small devices. Open Binder provides a unique inter-process communication (IPC) paradigm implemented as a kernel-loadable driver, and incorporates a broad range of programmatic utility classes and frameworks. PalmSource and ACCESS have released the Binder driver and its associated frameworks to the open source community. For more information, see www.openbinder.org.

Elsewhere: Jason (pretty much the mastermind behind the open-source effort).

Update: Eugenia has posted what I think will prove the definitive reportage of this release: OpenBinder introduction & interview with Dianne Hackborn.

Update 2: Slashdot covers the general PalmOS-Linux announcement. Nobody seems to have noticed the Binder part (except Eugenia); who can blame them, given the way it was buried in the press release?

Update 3: Wow, look at that cluttered architectural block diagram. A lot of unpleasant things there, like GTK and GStreamer (when we had a perfectly awesome rendering engine and media framework already built—that is, completed—for Binder). And hey, check it out, the nebulously-named “messaging framework” lives on! I swear, that thing will never be finished until someone decides to actually throw a team at it (instead of a pale blue rectangle on a diagram and a checkbox on a features list).

It’s at this point well-known that Krispy Kreme overexpanded, saturating the market with mediocre product instead of trading on the scarcity of availability (remember the lines outside a new Kreme store back in the late 90s and early 00s?) and cachet of its brand (Krispy Kreme is not the same as Shipley’s). Other factors claimed by KKD for its troubles include Atkins, although it’s now generally agreed that this was a smokescreen to cover its shady accounting practices and franchisee bullying.

So, in other words, this is all old news. Still, I think it’s still momentous that KK is abandoning an entire top-10 metropolitan market like Houston, even temporarily:

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is exiting the Houston market after reaching an agreement with its Houston franchisee, Lone Star Doughnuts. The five Houston-area stores will cease operations on March 8, as will the location in Beaumont. Lone Star Doughnuts said Thursday that it will launch its own brand of doughnuts as soon as Krispy Kreme closes. And Krispy Kreme said it plans to reopen stores in Houston, but didn’t say when.

The Chron article goes on to discuss the relationship between KKD and Lone Star Doughnuts, which had devolved into litigation (the settlement of which includes this franchise pullout).

Bottom line: you’ve got less than a month to get HOT DOUGHNUTS NOW.

Zillow.com makes your Realtor® just a little less useful: free market comps by neighborhood, with pretty zooming maps. It’s still in beta, so they don’t have comprehensive data yet, but who’s to say that your real estate agent even has comprehensive data? (It’s certainly not in his/her interest to tell you.) [via]

A new technique in foiling content-based spam filters: using CSS rendering to construct text that the filter can’t see.

V<span style=”float: right”> b </span>I<span style=”float: right”> d </span>A<span=20 style=”float: right”> z …

The “chaff” characters (b, d, z, …) float to the right, while the letters “VIA” in the above example (followed by “GRA” in the source material) settle to the left, lining up in order. Your spam filter’s tokenizer sees nothing. (Previous version of this hack relying on HTML rendering to construct text that the filter can’t see. Example: V<!–foo–>I<!–foo–>A<!–foo–>G<!–foo–>R<!–foo–>A.)

(This one took us down here at home, too.)

To: Rice University Community
From: Facilities Engineering and Planning
Subject: Campus Power Outage
Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2006

Early this morning, the Rice Campus lost power for approximately 2 hours due to a Centerpoint transformer failure. The emergency generator back-up systems throughout the campus operated properly. Power was restored to campus at 4:15am. Campus infrastructure and building systems have been and will be brought on-line and rechecked throughout the morning.

Today’s comp314 administration task:

$ mkdir -p project1/group{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16}/{tags,trunk,branches}
$ svn add project1

DAVID BRANCACCIO: We’ve been talking grand policy. The then director of the CIA, George Tenent, Vice President Cheney’s deputy Libby, told you that the intelligence that was the basis of going to war was rock solid. Given what you now know, how does that make you feel?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: It makes me feel terrible. I’ve said in other places that it was– constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel?

Most of the advertisements that accompanied the generally dull Super Bowl XL were themselves generally dull. My favorite, I think, was “Stunt City”, mostly for the mini-gag with the coffee at the end.

Other popular spots at our viewing included FedEx’s “Stick” and Nationwide’s “Gondola” starring Fabio. Trying too hard: Burger King, Full Throttle (seemingly claiming a secret ingredient), and Caddy. (Not trying hard enough: Mick Jagger.)

True tales of apartment living: Erin and I discuss our security situation.

(continued…) (49 words, 4 images)