Xmlenc 0.13 has been released:
The xmlenc library is a light-weight XML Encoding Library for Java. It fills the gap between a light-weight parser like SAX, and a heavy-weight XML output library, like JDOM.
Changes:
This release removes all deprecated methods and fixes a bug introduced in 0.12.
Here are the details: [homepage] [freshmeat page] [sourceforge project page]
I meant to type:
dd if=rescue.bin of=/dev/fd0. I typeddd if=rescue.bin of=/dev/hda. I have utterly destroyed the partition table on my primary hard drive. I have no backups. I am so completely fucked.Don’t drink and su.
But later, Linux made it all better:
I overwrote the first megabyte of my primary hard drive. That’s the boot sector, the partition table, and a large chunk of the start of my root filesystem. I have now recovered to the point where I believe (believe, but have not tested) I can reboot the system and have it come up in one piece. I’ve recovered my partition layout and built a new table. I’ve fscked the root filesystem and restored the obvious damage. I was even able to backup
/hometo another drive, just in case the recovery hasn’t been as successful as I thought.
Respect the OS:
Ask any Unix system administrator, and they’ll tell you about the one time they stopped respecting the OS. Unix respects you, it trusts you, because the only way to gain trust and respect is to offer it yourself.
Congrats for a successful recovery.
David Gammel points out some wicked things that the US House of Representitives has been doing with XML:
Check out xml.house.gov to see what the U.S. legislature has been up to with XML. If you are in DC, there is a presentation next week about their efforts as well.
Hmm, it’s next Wednesday evening. The funny thing is that I was thinking of attending a DC-LUG meeting next Wednesday for the first time. You know you’re a geek when two really geeky things conflict in your schedule…
Brad Wilson is on the ball tonight. He pointed to several things that are on the money:
Chris complains that Linux is ugly. Sam says that Windows installations have a half-life (something I truly believe was brought about by the invention of the registry). Robert thought Linux would come up and challenge Windows on the desktop, but was surprised when Apple became cool again.
My thoughts are, in this order: Try Red Hat 8.0. That’s pretty. Yes, Windows installs do have a half-life, I just never thought of it that way. Apple is cool. Here’s another one:
Are you listening, Apple? Make a tablet, make it sexy and hella-fast, and we’ll be there.
Ahh yes, the iPad. Is it just a matter of time?
Thanks, Greg, for the encouragement. 🙂
The Register: Sun’s missing Xeon-killer discovered.
Linux and Main: Metrowerks, the Motorola subsidiary, is expected to announce that it is acquiring the embedded Linux company Lineo. The announcement could come as soon as Friday. [via NewsForge]
O’Reillynet: Use Metadata to Improve Your Pictures.
Aaron Swartz will be at Comdex. on a panel called: The Computing Re-Revolutionaries: Business, Consumers, or Both?
That is all.
Chris Sells has been cranking out the content lately. Tonight’s installment is WinForms Data Validation. It’s a good quick tutorial on validation for all the .NETters out there.
I wonder if this weblog is in any way undesirable to both Java/Open Source people and .NET people. I’m an all of the above kinda guy, but do potential .NET readers get turned off by my Open Source/Java stuff and vica versa? I know I should really set up channels so that people can tune out the noise and only focus on the topic that interests them, but I’m lazy. It’s on my list of someday, which was listed as right after the recent template shift. We shall see.
Coverage by Paul Festa at CNet on recent activities at the W3C:
The Web’s leading standards group on Thursday issued a trio of documents on the architecture of Web services and launched an unprecedented effort to standardize Web services lingo.
Here are the docs:
Uche Ogbuji’s article on proper XML output in Python went live today:
The main problem with simple
WebServices.Org points to two interesting articles this afternoon. The first article from rediff.com contains a quote from Bill Gates:
“Tablet PC and XML Web services on .Net will bring about a revolution in using the converging technologies to such an extent that in the current digital decade, the use of paper and other intermediaries will become minimal,” Gates asserted.
The second article is from IDG’s IT World. It highlights some proof of concept projects and some gosh darn useable applications of the Google API.
Alexandre Dulaunoy at Advogato has released a draft paper entitled ” Good security practice for a Free Software release.”
As everybody knows, a lot of trojaned Free Software has been found. A vast majority of them are not using OpenPGP signed checksum file. I’m currently trying to make a basic HOWTO to make a Free Software release including OpenPGP signature. This can minimize the risk (as long as the user is checking the signature ;-). Here is a draft in PS and PDF format.
Don’t hesitate to provide comments and feedback following your own experience of the issue. (I hope to include the chapter in the Software Release HOWTO afterwards)
There’s a review at Slashdot of Java Development with Ant by Steve Loughran and Erik Hatcher. I’m about halfway through the book myself.
Mesa 5.0 has been released. A few features and a bunch of bugfixes. Mesa now supports OpenGL 1.4.
MSNBC Reports:
A last-minute addition to a proposal for a Department of Homeland Security bill would punish malicious computer hackers with life in prison.
DURING CLOSED-DOOR NEGOTIATIONS before the debate began, the House Republican leadership inserted the 16-page Cyber Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) into the Homeland Security bill. CSEA expands the ability of police to conduct Internet or telephone eavesdropping without first obtaining a court order, and offers Internet providers more latitude to disclose information to police. [via Newsforge]
I’m a little worried by this. I in no way support hackers and script kiddies using DDOS attacks and stuff like that. That is bad, they should be pubished. I’m not so sure about life in jail though. Yes, if the crime is serious enough, it’s nice for prosecutors to have that as an option, but does this mean a 13 year old script kiddie might serve life in jail for bringing someone’s website down for a few hours? That doesn’t exactly sound like the punishment fits the crime. We’ve seen that post-9/11, your civil rights can be suspended at a moments notice and the Constitution thrown out the window if you are a suspected terrorist.
I’d like to reiterate that I think malicious hacking is an extremely bad thing. The thing that scares me is that if this bill passes through the Senate, it would make things much easier for the Department of Homeland Security to invade my privacy. It makes it easier for the Department of Homeland Security to go to my ISP and make them divulge information about me. A bill like this might sound great in theory, as long as it is not abused. I’m extremely worried that it will be.
Supporters of the Berman-Coble p2p bill consitantly used the argument that if you opposed this bill, you were pro-stealing of files. Unfortunately this is not the case, and I oppose the Berman-Coble bill and this bill on the grounds that they freak me out. I’m worried that they will unneccesarily invade the privacy of too many people.
For the person reading this after a Carnivore dump, I am not a hacker. Well I am only a hacker in reference to “hacking on code.” I’m sure you’re not convinced.
Well, after looking into SOAP::Lite a little more, it appears that there is no real support for WSDL on the server side. This is a pretty big bummer. There is a module at CPAN called WSDL::Generator, though it would not install correctly via CPAN for me. WSDL::Generator looks pretty slick in theory, as it will generate a WSDL file from your perl source. I’ll have to look into this a little further, because I’m not into editing WSDL by hand. There is a WSDL editor available (free) from Cape Science, but that’s one more level of debugging that I’d rather not do.
I’ll have to do a little more digging before I figure out what to do with the status project. It’s a fun idea, and I think it could be useful at the same time. Porting over to Java once I have figured Axis out might be a good bet, or I could try playing in Python, another language that I sorta have a handle on. There are two implementations of SOAP for Python.
One thing that I’ve learned this afternoon/evening is that loosely typed languages make great SOAP clients, but not ideal servers.
This is an idea that I’ve had brewing in my head for awhile, and I finally took some time this afternoon to start on it. I envision a SOAP-based *nix monitoring server and client suite on several different platforms (hence web services). I decided to try out the SOAP::Lite implementation to create a quick test/proof of concept service using that implementation. I fired up CPAN, installed the module, and began. I was slightly frustrated at how seemingly vague the examples were, and that the same example was used on so many sites on the net. Here’s all that the service does at the moment:
[Curveball perl]$ perl status_client.pl
Calling uptime SOAP service
4:47pm up 6 days, 17:41, 2 users, load average: 0.08, 0.06, 0.15
SOAP call finished
Right now this web service is extremely simplistic, but over time I envision it evolving into a fairly sophisticated service that would be able to echo back to the client a lot of information, for example, returning a struct that contains values such as uptime.days, uptime.hours, uptime.minutes, load.average, users.numusers, and so forth.
Perl is the ideal language for this, because it is trivial to execute a command line program like uptime, strip it down to what you need, and return away. I’ll have to eventually put a proper page together, but for now you can snag the source in tgz or zip form. There’s a README and an INSTALL included in there which should be sufficient for most people with limited linux/*nix experience to test it out.
I’ll try to put together a coherent example using this at some point, and I’ll post any development news in here as well. I also plan to incorporate WSDL, just as soon as I read up on that part of SOAP::Lite.
Now I’m off to look at cars with my girlfriend. 🙂
Brent Simmons has this to say about weblogs and RSS:
Brent’s Law of Weblogs: If you’re not syndicating, you’re not publishing.
Heck yeah! 72 Miles! Computerworld has the scoop [vis Slashdot]:
The link to San Clemente Island — used to carry data from a seismograph, data logger and Global Positioning System receiver — runs with the maximum 1-watt power output allowed by the Federal Communications Commission for 2.4-GHz equipment, Werner-Braun said. At both ends of the link, HPWREN technicians installed high-gain, 2-ft. parabolic antennas to provide an additional boost to the signal.
Infoworld reports on the price cut:
INTEL HAS CUT the prices of its Celeron and Pentium 4 desktop processors in advance of the expected launch of a new 3.06GHz Pentium 4 processor this week, the company confirmed Tuesday.
To bring slower processors in line with the new chip, the 2.8GHz Pentium 4 will fall in price from $508 to $401, and the 2.67GHz and 2.60GHz Pentium 4 processors will decline from $401 to $305, according to Intel’s Web site. All prices are in 1,000-unit quantities.
Intel will also cut prices on its budget line of Celeron desktop processors. The 2.0GHz Celeron will fall from $103 to $83, the 1.8GHz from $83 to $69, the 1.7GHz from $69 to $54, and the 1.4GHz from $74 to $54, Intel said.