Archive: June 11, 2002
I didn't know there was an XML-RPC validation suite. I'm writing the test suite now at http://www.keithdevens.com/software/xmlrpc/validation_suite.php. I'll let you know how I make out.
Oh, I should log my time and see how long it takes me. All I did so far is create the validation_suite.php file and put the entire text of http://www.xmlrpc.com/validator1Docs into it as a comment. I'm going to do a kind of Literate Programming where the text of that page is my documentation, and then I write the program to match 
Ok, start your engines, ready... go - it's 10:53pm.
Ok, time out. It's 11:06 and I've written all the functions that don't take Structs or Arrays as input. I realized shortly before attempting the validation suite that I need accessor functions that will retrieve Structs and Arrays in addition to booleans, ints, etc. I should have written them before I attempted the validation suite but I didn't think about it. I'm taking a time out to write them now.
Ok, it's 11:24 and I wrote my XMLRPC_getStruct and XMLRPC_getArray functions. Back to work on the validation suite. Although I didn't actually test those functions yet, so hopefully they work right . If the validation suite fails, I'll know that they don't.
Ok, finished all the functions and the "calling framework", and it's 11:40. All the functions should be correct. However, I think I may have found something I didn't account for in my XML-RPC library, so I may have to fix that before this'll work. If the validator displays certain behavior it'll tell me I'm right about not accounting for it, so... time to try the validator.
Grr, the validator timed out! I'll write tests to validate the code myself, and then I'll submit it to the validator one more time in the hopes that it won't time out again.
Advogato: Designing server-side applications in PHP. The main reason I'm blogging this is because of dan's comments that GET after POST isn't actually supposed to work, which is news to me:
If the 302 status code is received in response to a request other
than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the
request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might
change the conditions under which the request was issued.
Note: When automatically redirecting a POST request after receiving
a 302 status code, some existing HTTP/1.0 user agents will
erroneously change it into a GET request.
Dan's comments:
By the time they got to RFC 2616, they apparently realised that "some existing HTTP/1.0" user agents includes basically every useful browser out there, so they changed the wording to "most existing user agent[s]" and introduced new responses 303 (allow redirect from POST, always using GET) and 307 (don't redirect from POST, just like they originally intended 302 to have done). So you probably should be using a 303 instead of a 302 for this purpose. If your users know what it is. How do you test that? I've no idea: it seems unlikely that simply checking the HTTP request version for 1.1ness is going to be particularly accurate. Frankly I'd be a lot happier if they'd just repurposed 302 instead of creating 303, but we have to hope there was some good reason for not following existing practice there.
I have to do some experimenting, but for now, here's the relevant section in the HTTP RFC.
Notes on Evolution from Wolfram's A New Kind of Science:
Following the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 many scientists began to argue that natural selection could explain all the basic phenomena of biology, and although some religious groups maintained strong resistance, it was widely assumed by the mid-1900's that no other explanation was needed. In fact, however, just how complexity arises was never really resolved, and in the end I believe that it is only with the ideas of this book that this can successfully be done. [p 861] [emphasis mine]
Also:
The Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection is often assumed to explain the complexity we see in biological systems -- and in fact in recent years the theory has also been increasingly applied outside of biology. But it has never been at all clear just why this theory should imply that complexity is generated. And indeed I will argue in this book that in many respects it tends to oppose complexity. But the discoveries in the book suggest a new and quite different mechanism that I believe is in fact responsible for most of the examples of great complexity that we see in biology. [p 14] [emphasis mine]
So you see I'm not the only one who questions the ability of current evolutionary theories to explain the complexity in nature. The jury is still out on whether Wolfram can do it.
Finally read the New York Times piece on weblogging that Dave's been talking about over the past few days. I read it primarily because my friend Justin forwarded it to me because he knows I'm into blogging.
I'm not sure why this is even being talked about. Up until now I've chosen to ignore the whole issue.
I don't know what the big deal is. One of the great things about blogs is that they're fundamentally personal. Each blogger decides to talk about what interests him. Some are more focused on political topics, some are more focused on tech topics, some on religious topics, and some on themselves
There's no "rift" between techblogs, warblogs, religionblogs or navelblogs. People like to create controversy where there is none because controversy seems more interesting. One of the reasons blogs are great is because they give an individual's voice a wider reach than it would have otherwise. Let's try not to pigeon-hole ourselves.
From J Software, a new book J for C Programmers in PDF (zipped). Via LtU.
Oh, and in case you don't know what J is:
J is a modern, array oriented, high level, high performance, general purpose programming language. J is used in a variety of industries including banking, investment analysis, insurance, derivative trading, scientific research, and education.
I just checked out the What is J PDF. It seems like it's used for math and graphing a lot, but it seems like something like Mathematica would be even better for that. Is this comparison between the two justified?
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Tuesday, June 11, 2002
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"IMDB for music"
IMDB for Music? It looks to be acouple of years old...http://MusicTell.co...
Ken Empie: May 14, 9:57pm