rebelutionary
Mike Cannon-Brookes on Java, J2EE, OSX, Open Source, Australia, Atlassian, Bug Tracking, JIRA and more...

Monday, 3 June 2002

Microsoft polishes Office for Apple - lots of fixes (good!), Palm support (good!). Amusing how Microsoft release MSN Messenger for OSX 3.0 - and it's a first release. 10:29:25 PM  comment []      Web browser feature I want:. I hate keeping bookmarks. Often, I'll find myself having visited a site a lot through links from other sites, but never remember its URL because each individual time I visited, the site wasn't important enough to remember. I want the web browser to keep track of what sites I visit frequently, and put them in a list for me. And I want the feature to be smart enough to work without me having to perform any configuration, or maintain any lists manually. [Charles Miller] I think similar things about email clients. Entourage is the best email client I've ever used (yes, it's a Microsoft product, only for OSX and nothing like Outlook). The second best is Evolution (I think because it's developed by people who use email a lot like I do) - I'm sure it will improve over time. However neither has all the features I want yet, things like: Remembering the last 10,000 people who have emailed me with a LRU algorithm (keeping ones that email me often). Entourage does this well, but the size of the list and access to it are nowhere to be seen. Learn over time which people I email a lot, and who email me a lot - make them 'higher priority' in my list of mail somehow. Threaded mail view for certain folders like mailing lists (Evolution has this) - which moves updated threads to the top of the list (Evolution didn't do this last I checked). Threaded view is useless if someone replies to a thread and it's buried because the initial message was a week ago. Customisable views across all my calendar, email etc - Entourage does this brilliantly with only one flaw - no regex! Be able to quickly tell my email program to 'forget' this piece of mail for a certain number of days. In Entourage this takes about 10 clicks (therefore I don't do it very often). Intelligently learn my email patterns. (Not sure how this would work :)) Be able to pull information out of a group of emails on a standard basis (useful for form submissions etc) into a computer readable form (like a CSV). Probably more that I can't think of at the moment. 10:21:02 PM  comment []      "I've been using the commercial Resin 2.1.1 server for all my Roller work for about a week. I have found Resin to be noticably faster than Tomcat 4.0.1, but I have not done any benchmarks.  I also found Resin to be easy to setup, just like Tomcat: unzip the files and run the start-up script. Right now, I have no reason so switch back to Tomcat.  I'll stick with Resin at least until I have time to take a look at the Tomcat 4.1 release candidate." [Blogging Roller] 12:45:40 PM  comment []      Pramati/OSUser integration completed! Yes, after many months, I finally started to understand JAAS and go the PramatiLoginModule finished. I think that J2EE, even with the JAAS standard, will need OSUser. There are too many inconsistancies right now. For example, the PramatiLoginModule is almost vendor-neutral, except that it doesn't work if the group principals aren't GroupImpl (a Pramati class). Likewise, JBoss and JRun, while both using JAAS, require different LoginModules to work correctly. I'll be playing with WebLogic 7 next, which also uses JAAS, and I have a feeling I'll be adding a fourth JAAS LoginModule to OSUser. JAAS is certainly no silver bullet. Writing four LoginModules for different JAAS implementations seems like craziness - except that it's sadly necessary. [PSquad's Corner] 12:44:04 PM  comment []      JBoss 3.0.0 is out - go get it, test it and improve it! (Also read Marc Fleury's announcement mail - love him or hate him, he's always fired up) I am truly excited about 3.0, it is a fundamentally solid product.  EJB done right, J2EE from the top to bottom, so much ingenuity in all the stacks that one paragraph is not enough.  We (JBoss Group) have released a free documentation book for 3.0 a getting started book of about 100 pages that will unlock many of the secrets of 3.0 for you.  This is alien stuff, this is killer stuff, I know it, I am proud of it. Let it fly, and let it fall flat on its face with bugs, help us fix them, fix them, even pay us to fix them, just be a hero. 3.0 is here, long live 3.0. 12:27:48 PM  comment []      Bashing The Cat: Tomcat Analysis: Amusing post from The ServerSide: We started out with some thoughts on Tomcat's effectiveness as a container (Why Anybody Might Have Let The Cat In Through The Door In The First Place), moved on to frustrations that people have with Tomcat (This Is One Lazy Cat), and then pulled in some musings on other containers like Resin (Look What The Cat Dragged In) and then ended up with a discussion on JBoss 3.0 and a long quote from Marc Fleury who concluded with his one-of-many "long live JBoss" mantras (THIS Cat, He Says, Has Nine Lives). 12:22:11 PM  comment []      "I see you're reading Rules for Revolutionaries... good book, and a good speaker. Guy was at ProjectWorld last year; I got him to sign both that and my (ancient) copy of The Macintosh Way. The scary part was when he said that it's almost impossible for someone who's gone through one revolution - like himself - to catch another one. " (from Steve) Scary indeed. I'm reading one of his other books (Selling The Dream) at the moment, it's all about evangelism - interesting stuff. 10:56:44 AM  comment []      Wow - I'm receiving some more great Java / J2EE blogs already! Remus (hi!) just emailed me about his blog, neuro zone - his biggest project RUE looks very cool! "Using RUE you can monitor almost anything, depending on your imagination and skills. It is mainly intended to be used as a general, local or remote, monitoring tool for any Java - based server such as Tomcat, Tyrex, Enhydra, JBoss, JOnAS, etc." 10:40:29 AM  comment []      JXTA-SOAP - JXTA Bridge: "The JXTA Bridge project is designed to allow SOAP communication over the JXTA P2P network. The design goals of SOAP integrated with JXTA are very attractive. You can now use JXTA and don't have to worry about building in protocol style interaction to your services. You can use SOAP encodings, faults, etc over the JXTA network.  JXTA services from different parties can now interact easier without having to worry about protocol level details. Services you build for JXTA can also be deployed over other networks. HTTP, SMTP, etc " In a word - cool. Kevin Burton does some really good stuff - I check his website quite regularly, ever since way back when he started JetSpeed. I just realise his blog has an RSS feed - aggregated! 9:37:52 AM  comment []      FORTUNE - Blodget in Exile To this same circle, Blodget's rise on Wall Street was astonishing. To them he was a Wall Street version of Chauncey Gardener, the illiterate gardener portrayed by Peter Sellers in the movie Being There whose empty-headed statements are mistaken for profound wisdom. His Wall Street friends had more respect for his abilities but were no less amazed by his good fortune. "Two years before this he was barely making enough money to buy bread," says one. "Now all of a sudden he's Britney Spears." 9:19:29 AM  comment []      I was thinking about what John Robb said today. Knowing how few Java / J2EE focussed weblogs there are, I decided to create a page listing to all that I have found. Hopefully this list will get larger in time and will help Java bloggers find other Java bloggers! See Java and J2EE Weblogs. If you know of one that I haven't listed, please do tell.  12:35:39 AM  comment []      Everytime you think you've got life figured out - it finds a way to tell you you're wrong. Just something I'd like to share for today . 12:09:00 AM  comment []