Day: December 4, 2002

Sam Ruby:

# Original version by Sam Ruby, written in Python.
# Ported to Perl, and enhanced by Jim Jagielski
# Enhanced to have links to personal pages by Sam Ruby.
# Enhanced to have the code suck less by Ask Bjoern Hansen.

The latest article posted at Advogato:

In recent years, computer science has become more of an applied science than a pure discipline. It is true that much of the driving force behind proliferation of computing devices is commercial. However, over-commercialization has begun cultivating products that give rise to ethical issues.

In this brief article, I shall mention two such areas which require our immediate attention in both making the public aware and warning the future researchers of the implications.

The first issue of php|architect is out.  It is priced reasonably too.  $1.99 per issue or 12 issues for $18.99.  Lots of good stuff seems to be in there. [via NewsForge]

It looks like Ed Cone is getting the snow and freezing rain that is headed my way.

Doc Searls (Skywave):

Mark my blog: Ogg is going to seriously kick ass in the long run.

Wow.  Phil Windley is resigning as CIO for the state of Utah:

I submitted my resignation as CIO for the State of Utah this morning.  It is effective December 31, 2002.  I have many mixed emotions: anger, sadness, excitement, and relief, among others.

File that under things that catch you by suprise.  The rest of his blog entry goes into a little detail, and he plans to get into it a little more down the road.  Good luck, Phil!

Diego goes into making a pretty and functional UI with Java/Swing in a little more detail.

OSNews:

A new study predicts that Linux will take over low-end servers and share the spotlight with .Net in high-end servers. Plus, hardware heavyweights HP, IBM and Sun–will lose out.

OSNews:

As the open-source movement is gains momentum, the debate over its future heats up. Can this loosely-formed coalition be able to withstand the pressure of Microsoft and other big companies that live off proprietary software? Read about it at ZDNet.

OSNews points to an article at Coyote Gulch:

“The latest gcc holds it own against Intel C++, winning some benchmarks it lost previously. There are still applications where Intel shines, but the differences between the compilers have narrowed. So which compiler is better? Like Einstein, I have to say the answer is relative.” Read the article here.

CNet:

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–A key figure for standards body the Wi-Fi Alliance says the wireless networking industry will surpass the revenue of household products such as Budweiser beer by 2006.

OSNews managed to get their hands on a Sun Blade 150:

Sun Microsystems loaned OSNews the high-end version of the new Sun Blade 150 series workstation, which sells for $3,395 USD (no monitor). Since this Solaris 9/SPARC machine is intended as a workstation, it is here reviewed as such in this article and not as a server.

WebServices.Org:

A review of the latest survey from Evans Data Corporation on how Web services are spreading across the Enterprise.

Centipede 1.0.0-beta3:

Krysalis Centipede is a project build system based on Apache Ant. Centipede uses pre-packaged modules called “cents” that it downloads and installs automatically. Cents can be used as Ant tasks or easy to use targets.

For example, Forrest is an XML standards oriented project documentation framework based on Apache Cocoon. In order to assist your projects adoption of this powerful documentation generation tool we have packaged it as a cent that will (optionally) be automatically downloaded, installed and used to build project documentation which includes output from other cents such as Javadoc, JDepend, Checkstyle and many others.

Hmm.  This sounds like Gentoo/package system/ports system for Java.  A very cool idea.

Man #1: “…so I was trying to ping this guy’s computer, but….”
Man #2: “What do you mean ‘ping’?”
Man #1 suddenly punches Man #2 in the shoulder.
Man #1: “Now hit me back.”
Man #2 punches Man #1 in the shoulder.
Man #1: “That’s ping.”

[via Will Cox via icann.Blog]

Holy crap!  I was searching and searching for a struts WML taglib two nights ago and last night.  Lo and behold, Matt Raible announced one this morning:

A Struts WML Tag Library has been posted to the struts-dev mailing list. It’s a “pre-release”, which means the project is probably not stable, but I’m guessing the technology and tags are.

Struts-wml taglib, ‘raw prerelease’ is available here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/struts-wml/

Here’s the release notes:

This is a fully functional ‘prerelease’ which includes source code, sample application, documentation, binary and libraries. It’s still somewhat unpolished (therefore raw prerelease). If you’re willing to hack arround with it a little bit, you’re welcome to download it. Please don’t forget to contribute your changes back to the project! [Full Post]

Now it’s your responsibility to get a WML project that you can implement this on!

Actually, I have a project up my sleeve that I wanted to use Struts+WML for, and I think this will do it.

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 14 seconds

Ack!  Combining bleeding-edge with Java can give you a headache.  Time to hunt down some .jars…

The first story is from the Business section, and it is the story of tablet PC technology from China.  It is called How China is Making the Pen as Mighty as the Sword:

BEIJING — For more than a year, Wang Jian and his team at Microsoft Corp.’s research lab here fed a computer a diet of handwritten documents — scribbled lecture notes, back-of-the-envelope diagrams, shopping lists. The computer grew smarter, until it was finally able to perform a mundane yet crucial task: It could distinguish words from most everything else on the page, then turn the letters into neatly typed text.

The other story, titled Break a Leg, informs us that Baz Luhrmann (the man) is putting on a Broadway production of ‘La Boheme.’  Quoting Luhrmann:

“Look, there are easier ways and quicker ways to have a hit on Broadway than doing Italian opera in the original language,” he says. “You can’t say enough about that. You can’t really be clear enough that as well as it seems to have gone so far, it’s an extraordinarily risky venture.”

Another classic Luhrmann quote:

Updated versions of classics have become one of Luhrmann’s trademarks. His goal with the opera, he says, was “not to allow it to be caked in, a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of someone’s memory of an early-20th-century production probably seen in 1930 that has by the very legend of it become the watermark for how you should do Puccini.”

I’m sure his production will be far from that.  It’s just a matter of time before I see it.  The official website is bohemeonbroadway.com.

Russ also likes the idea of RSS over NNTP.  He even got himself Davedotted.

According to Russ, Nokia has a 30 day phone loaner program for developers.  All you need is a credit card deposit.  Excellent move, Nokia.

Barbara French at Newsforge:

Bloor Research crosses the aisle and declares Linux enterprise-ready. META Group sees signs of changing tides in data center operating system dominance. The Linux-mainframe marriage makes sense with planning according to D.H. Brown and Giga, while Illuminata suggests maybe you shouldn’t care. Aberdeen Group finds that infosec attacks leveled the playing field among operating system targets in 2002 and urges suppliers and users to replace outdated defense strategies. Gartner says lack of user demand has slowed distro adoption of available Linux security enhancements.

From what I’ve read, it sounds like Linux is ready for mainframes and the datacenter.  Linux has been helping ISPs serve web sites and dialup connections inexpensively since I was in middle school.  I think Linux is ready.