Matt Croydon::Postneo

Year: 2002

  • Morning Links

    Keith Devens points out PHP from the Command Line.

    Clemens Vasters debunks JVM vs. CLR myths.

    Russ links to Servlet Best Practices.

    DJ Adams raises concerns over some rather “duh” patents that Strangeberry owns.

    Carlos Perez (who happens to blog just a few metro stops away from me) notes that AspectJ will be rolled into an eclipse project.

    Slashdot notes that a new satellite will be controlled via FTP over TCP/IP.  Don’t bother to read the comments, stories like this bring out the stupidest comments.

    And that’s all I’ve got.  I’m out the door.  Frag out!

  • RFC 3439: Some Internet Architectural Guidelines and Philosophy

    This is a cool RFC that I haven’t had a chance to read thoroughly yet.  I have a feeling that several gems are in here.  Of course, it’s not as amusing as RFC 1149 (A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers), but not many RFCs are.  Here’s an example from page 2 about large systems and the simplicity principle:

    The Simplicity Principle, which was perhaps first articulated by Mike O’Dell, former Chief Architect at UUNET, states that complexity is the primary mechanism which impedes efficient scaling, and as a result is the primary driver of increases in both capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operational expenditures (OPEX). The implication for carrier IP networks then, is that to be successful we must drive our architectures and designs toward the simplest possible solutions.

    I’ll read more later, but so far it looks like Randy Bush and David Meyer have done a great job updating an older RFC (1958 written in 1996) with some modern info.

  • Distributed Registry

    Xmlhack:

    Roger Costello and David Jacobs have announced a project to collaboratively develop a distributed registry technology for web services as an alternative to UDDI or ebXML’s centralized strategies.

    The project has a home page that describes it more fully, including details of design goals and a mailing list.

    All buzzwords aside, making sure that a web services directory/registry is distributed is good.  It means that nobody controls it, that it can’t easily be attacked, and it’s not going to put huge strains on any one set of resources.  Good stuff.  Here’s another thing to keep an eye on.

  • O’Reilly Articles: Java, Java, Web Services

    More O’Reilly goodness this evening:

    Configuring Tomcat with IIS Web Server by James Goodwill:

    In this article, we are going to continue our Tomcat Connector discussions with a look at how to configure Tomcat and Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) using the JK v1.2 Connectors.

    Introducing MDIP 2.0 by Timothy Appnel:

    The J2ME Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) specification was introduced just over two years ago to provide an open development platform for resource-constrained networked devices, such as commercial mobile phones. Since its introduction, the MIDP profile is proving to be the leading technology platform worldwide for developing this brand of mobile applications. Supporters include mobile carriers from around the world, including NTT DoCoMo, Sprint, and Vodafone, in addition to device manufacturers like Nokia, Motorola, and Research In Motion. The November 2002 release of version 2.0 of the specification introduced substantial new capabilities to the base platform that will enable developers to create more effective and powerful applications with less effort.

    From XML-RPC to SOAP: A Migration Guide, by Rich Salz:

    As you might expect from the name, XML-RPC is a way of using XML to send classic Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) over the net. XML-RPC’s use of XML is very simple. It doesn’t use namespaces. It doesn’t even use attributes.

    My thoughts are (in decending order): Sometimes you need Tomcat to play nice with IIS, MIDP 2.0 looks promising, and there are some things that XML-RPC is still good for, though SOAP is getting easier to use.  With my experiences, it has been much easier to do SOAP calls in .NET than Java, but it wasn’t particularly hard in Java, it was just more CLI and less WYSIWYG.

  • Dive Into RSS

    Congrats to Mark Pilgrim:

    XML.com: What is RSS? Hey, that’s me.

    Great article, Mark.  I’ll be looking forward to your article next month.

  • *Lookup

    Jon Udell brings up some interesting issues with his latest LibraryLookup notes.  There are definately problems with using ISBNs to search.  You can read Jon’s post for details, but a single title can have multiple ISBNs (hardcover, paperback, editions, etc).  Here is one specific problem that Jon notes:

    Another is that, book titles being non-unique, there is no universal identifier for the genus. I wonder if there’s a need for a Web service to solve this. Given an ISBN (for, say, a mass market paperback), it would map from species to genus, collect all species in the genus, and return a lists of ISBNS (paperback, hardcover, audiocassette, etc.)

    I have a feeling that implementing a service like this wouldn’t be too hard to implement using Amazon’s or Google’s web service APIs (or by Amazon themselves) and then send that back a list of ISBNs (via XML-RPC, SOAP, REST, etc) so that your javascript bookmarklet can look them up in turn.  This solution does have a problem, though.  If implemented on a single box somewhere, you’ve got a single point of failure.  It doesn’t just work, it’s not decentralized.  In order for this to work properly, you might have to employ some Javascript web services calls and employ some of localhost web services.

    I get a little fuzzy on details at this point, mostly because I don’t have a whole lot of experience in Javascript, but I’m sure that a javascript client could take advantage of Amazon’s XML over HTTP, or you could use a Javascript SOAP implementation.  Once you’ve got that going, a few calls to Amazon to get a list of ISBNs and you can proceed on your way.  Of course you could always make your calls, parse some data, and create a result page on the fly containing amazon and barnes and noble results, info and status from your local libraries, and related information from Google.

    Think of it as a on-the-fly search result dashboard.  Now extend that to include more than just books.  I’ll try to implement this when I get a chance, but I know there’s someone out there that could whip this up in 10 minutes, so feel free to do so if you get bored.

    In conclusion, it’d be nice if Amazon implemented a web service like Jon spoke about, but they don’t neccesarily have to.  We might be able to do pretty well on our own (with the help of their web services, of course).

  • Arch Linux 0.4 (Dragon)

    Arch Linux, an i686-optimized Linux distro, released version 0.4 (Dragon) today.  Coverage comes from Judd Vinet’s Advogato diary, PCLinuxOnlone, and Freshmeat.  Arch Linux 0.4 is built using GCC3.2 with other tweaks and bugfixes.

  • Really Simple Discovery, 1.0

    Dave and Brent cover RSD 1.0.  From Dave’s post:

    For users this means word processor-like editors to write for your weblog.

    I’ll drink to that.

  • Creative Commons RSS 2.0 Module

    Dave Winer:

    The creativeCommons RSS 2.0 module is now deployable. Thanks to everyone who commented, most of them were incorporated into the spec. At this point you may use the module in RSS feeds, and thanks to the magic of namespaces, as an extra bonus, you may also include them in other XML formats that are not RSS 2.0.

  • Java Rendezvous

    Pelle Braendgaard:

    I always liked the way Apple Rendezvous or Zeroconf was written by combining existing internet standards like DNS and DHCP in different ways. Now we as Java developers can join in the fun as well. Strangeberry a cryptic (dare I say Stealth) startup in Palo Alto have released a LGPL’d library for publishing and listening for Rendezvous services. This is super cool I think. The library itself is nice and lean. What this means is that anyone with a SOAP, XML-RPC or even just plain vanilla HTML service can publish it easy for use on very local networks.

    Pelle also goes into some code snippets.  It’d be nice if everything figured out how to work with everything else, wouldn’t it?

  • New Web Services Security Specifications

    Werner Vogels notes that six new web services security specs have just been published:WS-Security

    You can find them at MSDN and IBM.

    Clemens Vasters and Chris Sells are also on top of it.

  • JavaWorld Article on J2ME Design Patterns

    Javaworld:

    Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) is widely used for developing interactive applications on mobile devices. However, programming in MIDP can be frustrating because it provides very limited support for interactive content. As a result, some typical user interfaces are difficult to implement in mobile devices. In this article, Ben Hui describes four design patterns, Cascading Menu, Wizard Dialog, Pagination, and Slide Show, which make interactive content creation easier. These design patterns are simple to understand and apply to your projects.

    Your design pattern will vary depending on the project, of course, but I particularly like the Wizard/Dialog pattern for a data input/output oriented application.

  • JSch: Java Secure Channel 0.0.9 Released

    From the JSch page:

    JSch allows you to connect to an sshd server and use port forwarding, X11 forwarding, file transfer, etc., and you can integrate its functionality into your own Java programs. JSch is licensed under GNU LGPL.

    JSch 0.0.9 was released.  The freshmeat page says that this version added support for SSH2 through a SOCKS 5 proxy.  Just a heads up for anyone looking to incorporate SSH tunneling into their projects.  Requirements are JDK1.4+.  Excellent project!

  • IBM’s 16-Chip Server

    CNet:

    IBM has begun shipping 16-processor x440 servers, its highest-end mainstream machines using Intel chips, the company plans to announce Wednesday.

    The system consists of two eight-processor, rack-mounted systems that are 7 inches tall and connected with high-speed cables. It’s the current flag-bearer for IBM’s sustained effort to build ever more powerful Intel servers. The system uses the first version of Intel’s Xeon MP processor, code-named Foster MP.

    An x440 with 16 processors and 8GB of memory costs $81,000, said Deep Advani, vice president of IBM’s xSeries servers.

  • AmazonLookup Bookmarklet, Now With Bonus BNLookup!

    Access an amazon detail page from your local library’s website, or any website with an ISBN in the url.

    A quick URL replacement in Jon Udell’s LibraryLookup program allows you to go an amazon detail page from any url with a single ISBN number in it.  This was a request by one of Jenny (the shifted librarian)’s friends.  So anyway, here it is:

    AmazonLookup

    AmazonLookup (Redirect)

    The usual: drag it to your ‘Links’ bar on internet explorer, go to a URL with an ISBN in it (a library page for example), click AmazonLookup, and you’re there.  I wondered how fun it would be to transport yourself from Amazon’s page about a book to Barnes and Noble’s page about the same book.  A little more URL tweaking, and we have:

    BNLookup

    BNLookup (Redirect)

    Feel free to pop by your local library’s website, pop over to Amazon, to Barnes and Noble, back to your local library, and so on.

    Update: It should now open full screen in a new window with toolbars and all that good stuff.  I have tested it with IE6, Phoenix 0.5, and Mozilla under windows.  Let me know if you have any problems.  I have licensed AmazonLookup and BNLookup under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.  The original work (and all of the heavy lifting) was done by Jon Udell.  These two scripts are merely a quick hack on Jon’s awesome idea.  See Jon’s recent post for details.  Redirect version added at Dan Gillmor’s request.

    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

  • RTP Roadtip

    Looks like I might have a roadtrip to the Research Triangle Park area in my near future.  Mapquest posts the time to beat at 4 hours, 51 minutes.  I won’t compare Mapquest vs. actual time for DC->Atlantic City or DC->New York City trips just in case a law enforcement officer happens to be reading this.  🙂

  • Managed Pointers

    Thomas Restrepo asks the question:

     What would managed pointers pointing to unmanaged memory be useful for?

    I believe the answer is 42.

  • Java Memory Profiler, Written in C

    JMP, a Java Memory Profiler, is written in C:

    JMP is a profiler for java that can be used to trace objects usage and method timings. JMP uses the JVMPI interface to gather statistics and interact with the JVM. JMP uses a GTK+ interface to show the status.

    Does that hurt your head too, or just mine?

  • Uncle Bill’s Helicopter

    Michael Taht:

    The light turned from red to green. And from green to red. And from red to green. And from green to red. I thought about how many lives that little traffic light had saved, of the engineer who made it work that good, and of the people that had worked so hard to keep it working… the light turned from red to green, and I said thanks, and drove on.

    And if you’ve heard from Josh Taht lately, read this.

  • Low Powered UltraSparc

    CNet reports:

    Sun Microsystems’ UltraSparc IV chip will debut in the second half of 2003 with two processors etched into the same slice of silicon, a technique that packs more computing punch, a company executive said Monday.