Comments for Gary Burge

Comment on GoogleUpdate.exe? by Gary Burge

Gary Burge — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:07:20 +0000

I have since learned that GoogleUpdate.exe is (or is part of) Google Gears, a legitimate and useful software program that allows web applications in the “cloud” to be used offline.

The problem I have with GoogleUpdate.exe is that even though one uninstalls all Google software and all software using Gears, GoogleUpdate.exe still remains, still runs as a service, reinstalls itself, and provides no uninstall facility. Sort of like Sony’s root kit.

Not the thing I expect from the “do no evil” company.

Comment on Best Valentine video ever by wife

wife — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:32:06 +0000

That was the best Valentine, ever!

Comment on The sad state of ASP.Net programming by shawn.oster

shawn.oster — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:05:59 +0000

I’ve noticed the farther down the rabbit hole you get with any framework the more black magic there is to deal with. I develop in Delphi, ASP.NET, PHP and Rails and each one has areas that make me pull my hair out.

With PHP it’s PEAR, I hate coming across code samples that just assume you have PEAR installed or, oh, sorry, this only works in PHP 5.0 or, oh, you *did* compile PHP with such-and-such switch right?

Rails has so many wonderful “helper” methods that you often can’t find where anything is coming from, don’t know if the snippet you’ve just grabbed is using someone’s home-grown helper extension or is one of the unofficial extensions that everyone seems to install but no one talks about.

ASP.NET has the issues you mentioned, plus the whole infrastructure of webforms which destroy the ability to use server controls with any client-side library that uses ids like jQuery.

Basically each platform has it’s pros and cons and a lot of how much you enjoy working in any of them is how well you know the entire ecosystem. When I first did PHP programming I thought it was the biggest mess of poo out there, with so many conflicting ways it could be configured, so many random folders it’s config could be pulled from, the huge number of sites with horrible samples that lacked any type of proper url encoding or sql-inject prevention. Now I think it’s great for small sites, though I still prefer ASP.NET for larger sites because of the easy bolt-ons like logins/roles, theming and internationalization support. With the new MVC bits they just dropped it’s actually a lot of fun again.

Comment on Glen Campbell and Stone Temple Pilots: “Wichita Lineman” by Gary Burge

Gary Burge — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 14:23:48 +0000

This wonderful video has been yanked off of YouTube.com, presumably by the copyright holder. Too bad.

I loved the video so much that I bought the album – the full DVD/CD combination for three times the usual price of audio only. Although I like Stone Temple Pilots, I never would have even known about the DVD version had it not been for someone posting this video on YouTube.

When is the record industry going to wake up and realize the potential of viral marketing? (Answer: probably too late to do anything about it. Sue first, innovate later.)

Comment on Soft as a baby’s bottom by Gary Burge

Gary Burge — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 14:18:38 +0000

I missed it when it passed the 1 million views mark, but as of today (December 1, 2007), more than 2.1 million people have viewed this video on YouTube.com.

Comment on We are not afraid to entrust the American people… by Daveg

Daveg — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:51:04 +0000

JFK was believed because there weren’t the millions of competing thoughts/opinions/facts flying around like we have today. Bush is not the first despised president, although he may be the most despised, and I contend that you will never see another president that can maintain a non-despised quotient above, say, 45%. The internet and the loss of media credibility is the cause of that.