Matt Croydon::Postneo

Category: Open Source

  • Freshmeat: Databases, RSS for Java, and a Web Services-enabled CMS

    Several releases worth mentioning on Freshmeat today:

    SAP DB 7.4.03.10 (Development) was released:

    This release marks the end of the beta phase. It contains bugfixes, new capabilities for the SERIAL datatype, and a new WebDAV server.

    See Kenneth Hunt’s entry for more info.

    RSSLibJ:

    RSSLibJ is a Java class library designed primarily to generate RSS data in various formats, based on a simple object model. Either RSS or RDF can be generated, and custom generators can be supplied as well.

    I’ve checked out the online example.  It looks really easy to generate a valid RSS feed in Java.  Here’s what’s new in 0.1.4:

    This release generates validatable RSS 0.92, RDF, and RSS 2.0, as tested by http://feeds.archive.org/validator.

    Ampoliros 3.2.1 looks interesting:

    Ampoliros is an advanced and easy to use distributed PHP Web applications platform, featuring a powerful XML-RPC and SOAP interface. It is suitable as an Internet/Intranet development and deployment system. It has a very strong modular architecture and allows very fast deployment of Web solutions.

    I like the XML-RPC and SOAP part.  It looks like mostly a bugfix release, though I haven’t stumbled across it before:

    PHP 4.3.0 and Windows related bugs have been fixed. Various other code improvements and fixes have been made.

    It looks like a solid *nuke-like (but unique) CMS in PHP.  Screenshots look extremely clean and useful.  This looks like a CMS to keep your eyes on.

  • Blojsom on SourceForge

    javai18n:

    Well, blojsom has been approved on SourceForge. The CVS repository will be populated around 4 PM and I’ll make a WAR download available at that point.

  • Interview with Alan Cox

    ZDNet OZ has a quick interview with Alan Cox. [via NewsForge]

  • Java.OSDir.com

    O’Reilly’s OSDir now has a Java section.

  • Parsec to Go Open Source

    Slashdot:

    The Parsec creators have announced today that they are going to release the Parsec project source code early next month.

    Parsec is a 3-D space shooter.  The screenshots look impressive.  It looks like it is set up to be massively multiplayer.  It looks like it has potential.

  • Palm VNC 2.0

    Plam VNCnf0:

    PalmVNC 2.0 is a high resolution VNC client for palm. It looks really nice, guess i’ll give this a try soon.

    Wow.  It’s even GPL’d.  I haven’t found a whole lot of open source software in the Palm/Pocket PC arena.  Props are due to Oliver Gerardin, author of the program.

  • Oracle: 1.5 Gigs of Stuff + Apache

    Phillip Pearson:

    Installed Oracle last night (to see what it’s got over MySQL) and found that, along with about 1.5 Gb of other stuff, it installed a perfectly functional copy of Apache/1.3.22 (Win32), with mod_perl, mod_ssl and mod_fastcgi, (along with mod_oprocmgr and mod_plsql, which presumably let you get at Oracle’s internals a little better).

    Been there.  That 1.5 gigs of ‘other stuff’ takes quite a bit to install.

  • XP Bashing

    TheServerSide did a little bashing of eXtreme Programming this morning.  If you’d rather not apply XP and pair programming to your project, take a few things out from the XP philosophy (use Ant, integrate continuously, generate tests, etc) and apply it to a traditionally managed project.

    I think you can get a lot out of taking just one or two things from the XP philosophy.  Even if you’re one programmer on an assignment, generate tests and run them constantly.  Use JUnit to test your Java stuff, other test frameworks for other platforms.  Think about giving the customer something useful quickly, then adding features.

    You might not be pair programming, but it just might help.

  • Apache 2.0: I’ll Wait for the Modules

    NewsFactor has the obvious story about why Apache 2.0 is not widely adopted yet:

    Another reason Rackspace is not rushing to switch is the lack of module support for Apache 2.0. Many of the standard modules used with Apache 1.3, such as PHP and mod_perl, are still considered “experimental” in the latest version. According to Elmendorf, “Apache is great, but it really serves as a platform to build all this other stuff on…. When you look at a core module like PHP not being supported, there’s no rush getting into it.”

    [via NewsForge]

  • Easy CVS Server

    nf0:

    I finally got around to setting up CVS on one of the Red Hat 8 servers today. This is an excellent guide for doing it.

  • openMosixApplet

    openMosixApplet:

    The openMosixApplet allows users to see the real-time status of an openMosix cluster. It consists of a daemon which the applet connects to in order to grab the necessary info, and uses the Chart2D library.

    Very nice.  I’ve tested a 2-node OpenMosix cluster which went quite well.  I’ve recently come across a plethora of ancient hardware.  I’m thinking of setting up a diskless OpenMosix cluster, I’m just waiting for the free time to materialize.

  • Rsync, baby!

    Linux Security pointed to an Earthweb article about using rsync to do backups:

    There’s a new kid on the backup software block: rsync. rsync was originally designed to replace rcp, the venerable old Unix remote copy program. Because of its sophisticated means of synchronizing and transferring file trees, rsync is widely used for mirroring Web sites. rsync transfers only the changes in files, using the devilishly clever rsync algorithm. It calculates diffs without needing both files to be present. This little bit of magic is described in the documentation accompanying the program (for those interested in such). rsync then does on-the-fly compression, making network file transfers very fast and efficient.

  • Parsing RSS With Java

    David Czarnecki:

    If anyone is interested, I’ve posted the XML Schema (XSD) and ant task information that I was using to generate and parse RSS 0.91 for blojsom, my soon-to-be-released-in-a-day Java port of Blosxom. All the proper elements should be there.

  • JSP Error Pages

    Ack!  I was without internet all workday yesterday at the store.  I was hoping to elaborate on my Java jab this morning, but was unable to do so.  First of all, I’d like to thank Dave Johnson for creating a kickass open-source Java-based weblogging package.  I have it running behind the firewall (along with a movable type installation) to play with and test.  It’s really cool.  And it’s free.

    I do find the stack trace when something goes wrong with Tomcat to be both a beeyotch and a blessing.  It’s great if you’re trying to debug stuff or figure out which class file you’re missing, but I’d like to hide all of that info from end users.  I think it would be ideal to have a simplified error page (like this example over at devshed) for end users, and enable a more detailed error page for debugging/development (DEBUG == 1).  Just a thought.

    Andy caught the error quicky (one of those errors that does not present itself until it is live) but not quite quickly enough.  It looks like Dave is thinking of simplifying things a bit to get rid of Velocity problems.  He might want to keep Velocity available as an option over a simplified macro system just in case people want to do cool Velocity stuff on a per-post basis.

  • LinuxWorld In Words – Mono Notes

    I stuck around LinuxWorld until Miguel de Icaza issued his State of the Mono Address.  I’ve been following the Mono project for some time via the website, but this was much better.

    C# is done, VB is 70% done, and JavaScript is 50% done.  This is good.  Miguel demonstrated an almost unmodified version of iBuySpy that was only really slow because it was connecting to an MSSQL server in Spain over 802.11b.

    In theory, you could write an ASP.NET web application today and deploy it on a Linux server using Mono.  You can reuse the docs that are available for C# and .NET (from Microsoft), and you can also reuse the docs and resources available from MS and third parties.

    Miguel stressed that we should reuse the Microsoft booth (next to the Mono booth) to learn about all of the cool ASP stuff that you can do.

    The Mono team is also working on a new version fo their JIT compiler which will speed up apps significantly.  He also demoed a sweet debugger written in GTK# (GTK bindings for C#) and a digital camera organization app that he wrote for himself (not for you).  It was running slow over a wireless connection, so he brought out the laptop to reassure us that the app was fast and non-blocking.

    It is obvious that WinForms is one of the least mature parts of Mono.  More people are interested in using Mono for hosting ASP apps, so that stuff is getting done quicker.  He stressed several times that if we wrote some regression tests, patched some code, did some documentation, that Mono would be complete in a matter of weeks.

    There is database support for pretty much every popular database that runs under Linux.  You can take an exe produced from Visual Studio or the mono compiler and run it using mono.

    Overall I was impressed by the state of Mono and the demos.  It’s awsome to be able to take a Microsoft demo app out of the box and run it using Mono.  There were only a few configuration changes that had to be made to take case specific files into consideration.  Other than that, it just worked: mono server.exe 8080.

  • LinuxWorld in Pictures

    LinuxWorld 2003
    Entrance to the Javits Center

    LinuxWorld 2003
    People lining up for ‘IBM Customer Day’

    LinuxWorld 2003
    The IBM Booth

    LinuxWorld 2003
    The AMD Booth

    LinuxWorld 2003
    Helix Presentation

    LinuxWorld 2003
    Intel’s PCXPO booth was cooler

    LinuxWorld 2003
    JXTA Presentation at the Sun booth

    LinuxWorld 2003
    Presentations at the Red Hat booth were well attended

    LinuxWorld 2003
    The Sun and IBM booths were really close together

    LinuxWorld 2003
    The dot-org section is where all the hackers were

    LinuxWorld 2003
    This is pyDDR. It is not running on a PS2

    LinuxWorld 2003
    Ximian’s jungle motif

    LinuxWorld 2003
    ‘Cluster’ was the buzzword of the day

    LinuxWorld 2003
    Best In Show

    LinuxWorld 2003
    Miguel de Icaza showing off his app in Mono

    LinuxWorld 2003
    Miguel swore that the program was running slowly because of the wireless connection

    LinuxWorld 2003
    He ran it on localhost, it’s fast!

    LinuxWorld 2003
    It was really cold

  • Skimming the News

    I’ve stumbled upon many things that need to be explored in depth, but for the time being, here are a few quick links that I thought were interesting:

    • [H]ard|OCP: “The mini digital media boards known as the VIA EPIA M-Series Mini-ITX mainboards get certification from Microsoft for their CE embedded OS. Kinda cool, you know…a tiny OS for a tiny PC.”
    • BBC: “Looking to the future, Mr Iwata said Nintendo was planning to launch a next-generation console in 2005 or 2006.”
    • Roblimo had fun hanging out at the dot-org section of Linux World.  That corner was less PR BS and more work/play than the rest of the show.  More on that later.
    • Wired News: “NEW YORK — Penguin jokes are proliferating in even greater numbers than usual at LinuxWorld 2003.”
    • Greg released a new version of NewsGator.

  • New Stuff from Apache

    Sam Ruby on new projects at Apache:

    James (from Jakarta), Cocoon and Web Services (both from XML).

    The Web Services project interests me, I’ll have to take a look at that later.

  • Open Source Honeypots

    RootPrompt points to a Security Focus article on creating open source honeypots:

    Honeypots are an exciting new technology. They allow us to turn the tables on the bad guys, we can take the initiative. In the past several years there has been growing interest in exactly what this technology is and how it works. The purpose of this paper is to introduce you to honeypots and demonstrate their capabilities. We will begin by discussing what a honeypot is and how it works, then go into detail using the OpenSource solution Honeyd.

  • Interview With Stephen Wolfram

    O’Reillynet interviewed Stephen [evil genius] Wolfram:

    Stephen Wolfram is the creator of the popular Mathematica program, the author of A New Kind of Science, and a keynote speaker at O’Reilly’s upcoming Bioinformatics Technology Conference. Tim O’Reilly recently conducted a brief interview with Wolfram about his research, his new book, and its connection to bioinformatics. We’re looking forward to a more substantial opportunity for a Q&A with Stephen at the Bioinformatics Conference.